CIRCUMAMBULATIONS IN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY
BRILL’S INDOLOGICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY
JOHANNES BRONKHORST IN CO-OPERATION W...
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CIRCUMAMBULATIONS IN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY
BRILL’S INDOLOGICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY
JOHANNES BRONKHORST IN CO-OPERATION WITH
RICHARD GOMBRICH • OSKAR VON HINÜBER KATSUMI MIMAKI • ARVIND SHARMA VOLUME 19
CIRCUMAMBULATIONS IN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY Essays in Honour of Dirk H.A. Kolff EDITED BY
JOS GOMMANS & OM PRAKASH
BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2003
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Circumambulations in South Asian history : essays in honour of Dirk H.A. Kolff / edited by Jos Commans & Om Prakash. p. cm. — (Brill’s indological library ; 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13155-8 1. South Asia—History. I. Kolff, D.H.A., 1938- II. Gommans, Jos J. L. III. Prakash, Om. IV. Series. DS335.C55 2003 954—dc21 2003051885
ISSN 0925-2916 ISBN 90 04 13155 8
© Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ......................................................................
vii
List of Contributors ..................................................................
ix
Introduction ................................................................................ Jos Gommans and Om Prakash
1
The Tides of the Indian Ocean, Islamization and the Dialectic of Coast and Inland .............................................. Jan Heesterman Shah Jahan wore Glasses: Remarks on the Impact of the Dutch East India Company on Northern India and Some Suggestions for Further Research .............................. Hans van Santen
29
47
To be a Servant of His Catholic Majesty: Indian Troops of the Estado da Índia in the Eighteenth Century .............. René Barendse
69
The Trials of Captain Hackert and Engineer Andries Leslorant at the Malabar Council of War ............ Mark de Lannoy
105
Bedara Revisited: A Reappraisal of the Dutch Expedition of 1759 to Bengal .................................................................. Hugo s’Jacob
117
Between Fact and Fictions: Khoja Gregory alias Gurgin Khan, the “Evil Genius” of Mir Qasim ................ Bhaswati Bhattacharya
133
Two Captains of the Jawnpur Sultanate ................................ Simon Digby
159
vi
Slavery and Naukarì among the Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad ............................................................................ Jos Gommans
179
The Legitimation of Kingship in India: Bundelkhand .......... Godard Schokker
217
The Short Career of Walter Dickens in India ...................... Dick Kooiman
233
Writing and Reading Tod’s Rajasthan: Interpreting the Text and its Historiography .................................................. Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
251
The Idea of Modernity: European Progress for the Rest of the World? .............................................................................. Victor van Bijlert
283
Modern Media of Communication and Indigenous Knowledge in India and Europe: Towards an Anthropological Perspective .................................................. Jan Brouwer
307
From Chariot to Atom Bomb: Armament and Military Organisation in South Asian History .................................. Dietmar Rothermund
325
Bibliography of D.H.A. Kolff ..................................................
353
Index ..........................................................................................
359
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This Festschrift serves to mark Dirk Kolff ’s retirement as Professor of Modern Indian History at Leiden University. The contributors are some of his friends and colleagues, from within and beyond his own country (the Netherlands) and discipline (history). The result is a polyphonic tribute to a many-sided and wide-ranging scholar. This volume could not have been produced without the friendly help of Annemarie Kolff who provided us with some essential biographical information; the generous cooperation of Marc de Haan who made and donated the photograph; the understanding assistance of Lia ten Brink and Carolien van Zoest for helping us by copying and scanning some unprocessed manuscripts. We are also very grateful to Ian Wendt who saved this volume from the most dubious manifestations of “Duglish”. Finally we are most obliged to E.J. Brill Publishers for agreeing to publish the volume and doing an excellent job of it. A volume including essays written by such a wide range of authors drawing from such a wide variety of linguistic sources makes standardised transliteration not only problematic but also undesirable. In general, we have avoided the use of diacritics for personal and geographical names—with the exception of Schokker’s paper that retains the spirit of its Braj sources—and instead have employed their most common and modern spelling. In the essays that use or refer to indigenous Indian or Indo-Persian sources, transliteration has been employed for institutional and technical terms. In these cases, as with personal and geographical terms, spelling has been standardised.
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
R B is fellow of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW). B B is associated to Kolkata University and publishes on the early-modern social-economic history of South Asia. V B is professor at the Management Centre for Human Values at the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata. J B is professor of cultural anthropology at the NorthEastern Hill University in Shillong. S D is presently based at Jersey but has been a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a member of the Oriental Faculty at the University of Oxford. J G is associate professor at the Kern Institute of Leiden University. J H is emeritus professor of Indian Civilisations at the Kern Institute of Leiden University. H ’J was associate professor at the History Department of the University of Groningen. D K is associate professor at the History Department of the Free University of Amsterdam. M L is research assistant at the National Archives in The Hague. O P is professor of economic history at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. D R is emeritus professor of modern South Asian history at the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg.
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L R is professor of political science and the social sciences at the University of Chicago. Together with his wife, S H R, he publishes extensively on a wide range of issues involving modern South Asian society. H S is a diplomat in the Dutch foreign service. At present he is Head of the Security and Defence Policy Division in The Hague. G S was associate professor at the Kern Institute of Leiden University.
INTRODUCTION Jos Gommans and Om Prakash
Als iemand die de geschiedenis en cultuur van India doceert aan een universiteit in ons land, schaam ik me eigenlijk het toe te geven, want ik ben medeverantwoordelijk voor de stagnatie van ons India-beeld. Toch kunnen alle universiteiten van Europa tezamen hier weinig aan veranderen. Om ten lange leste een idee van India te verkrijgen dat recht doet aan die samenleving, hebben we kunstenaars nodig. Als we af willen van de vele clichés, waarvan ik er enkele noemde, zullen we heel wat lagen van vooroordelen van ons af moeten pellen en India de kans geven ons te verrassen en zich te laten zien in een nieuwe vorm.1 D.H.A. Kolff
On the first of March 2003, Dirk H.A. Kolff became emeritus professor of Leiden University. From the very beginning, Kolff ’s career has been closely connected to that academic institution. After taking his MA in History there in 1967, he became lecturer at the Kern Institute in 1971. In 1983 he finished his PhD thesis and in 1991 became Leiden professor of the Modern History of South Asia. This volume is a collective tribute to Kolff ’s scholarship by some of his friends and colleagues. As usual with tributes, everyone brings valuable oblations from his own exotic homeland, the result being as rich as it is variegated. Perhaps the latter should be tolerated in a volume dedicated to a scholar who discards one-dimensional views and prefers the pluriform conveyed by multiplicity of voices. Reading all these different papers certainly evokes Kolff ’s own metaphor of the circumambulation which offers no certainty or finality but merely
1
Speech of D.H.A. Kolff at the opening of the exhibition of Rameshwar Singh in March 2001 at art-gallery Jan Steen in Amsterdam (“Schilderijen van Rameshwar Singh: Kennismaking met een Indiaas kunstenaar”, Beeldaspecten, 13, 4/5 (2001), p. 13). “As someone who teaches the history and culture of India at one of our country’s universities, I really feel ashamed to admit it, since I am partly responsible for the stagnation of our image of India. Still, all of Europe’s universities together can hardly change this. Ultimately, to get an idea of India that does justice to that society we need artists. If we want to get rid of the many clichés, I mentioned a few of them, we shall have to peel our layers of prejudice and give India the chance to surprise us and to show itself in a new form.” (translation JG)
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reflections on the ongoing mystery. Om Prakash, himself a monetary historian, will attempt to convert these different tributes into one currency and carefully estimate its overall value. Before that, however, Jos Gommans will discuss Kolff ’s own scholarly circumambulations at the periphery of history, or to use Kolff ’s own phrase, at the confluence of anthropology, history and indology. Although he has not been a particularly prolific writer, it is all the more remarkable that Kolff ’s work stands at the root of what has become a most flourishing South Asian branch of ethnohistory, including that most uncanny of offshoots: the new military history of South Asia. And there is definitively more to come, as his most recent work anticipates his explorations into yet another fringe of the historical discipline: South Asian psychohistory. By highlighting his published scholarly work in this volume, it is not intended to underplay his considerable contributions as a teacher. Many who have attended his classes have been inspired by the way he leads his students from one surprise to the other, slowly but surely breaking down preconceived notions about a static and backward Indian civilisation.2 Besides, it should not be ignored that Kolff was an enthusiastic university manager; this being a somewhat rare phenomenon among his Leiden colleagues.3 Moreover, beyond the purely academic, were his repeated attempts to stimulate the social and spiritual cohesion of the university community. Although his idea of a university meditation centre failed to materialise, thanks to his concerted efforts, the Leiden Faculty Club was realised in 1999.4 All in all, though, we feel Kolff was most successful as a writing scholar. Hence, the following will turn to his internationally recognised contributions to various fields of South Asian studies. 2 Kolff ’s fondness for teaching, particularly to the general public, is most clearly demonstrated in his involvement in the development of a very successful course in world history at the Dutch Open University of Heerlen. See the report by M. Broesterhuizen in Katern Hoger Onderwijs ( Juni 1985), pp. 5–8. 3 From 1992 until 1997, he served as the director of the Centre for Asian, African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS) (see D.H.A. Kolff, “Aziatische, Afrikaanse en Amerindische talen en culturen (het ‘niet-westen’)”, in H.J. de Jonge and W. Otterspeer (eds), Altijd een vonk of twee. De universiteit Leiden van 1975 tot 2000 (Leiden, 2000), pp. 59–65. Kolff himself said about this period: “. . . a large part of it was a waste of time. Nothing remains [er ligt niks], it vaporizes” (Dirk van Delft, “De vrijgestelde onderzoeker”, Hypothese, July 2000, p. 11). 4 The plan for the meditation centre reminds one of one of the ancestors of the Kolff family, Ds Gualtherus Kolff (1644–1705), who was a Protestant minister in Vuren en Dalem, Noordeloos and Maassluis (N. Manneke, Kolff in zeven eeuwen
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1. Exploring the periphery of history: from ethnohistory to psychohistory Kolff and Huizinga About a hundred years ago the Dutch sanskritist Johan Huizinga decided to leave the field of Indian studies. As foreshadowed already in his dissertation on Indian drama, he now became frustrated with the civilisation of India as a whole. In both he sorely missed a sense of cause and effect, the destiny of history and the conflicts of people of flesh and blood. According to Huizinga the visual image of India remained necessarily vague in line and but faintly coloured, especially in those parts where a real historical narrative, a “sense of living” will always be extremely essential for our understanding. He was probably not only missing proper historical sources, but also adequate “schemes and forms” to reveal to the historian the connections of past events. As in its drama, Indian history presented itself as a succession of poetical tableaux vivants—as merely a presentation in sequence of lyrical impressions. At this time, Huizinga himself was looking for a solid middle ground between, on the one hand, his earlier impressionistic mood, i.e. his tendency to find visual images that could create order in otherwise unrelated sequences of events, and, on the other hand, his more recent interest in a more positivistic approach, in other words, to let the sources speak for themselves. The combination of these two contradictory emotions implied that Huizinga not only distrusted all-embracing and all-explaining paradigms but also that he had a certain aversion against specialisation. Perhaps this inner dualism was the source of Huizinga’s later success as one of the most imaginative and innovating historians of the European Middle Ages.5
(Rotterdam, 2001, pp. 18–9). But as Kolff observed himself, more than this religious background, the family’s common riverine connections are striking (D.H.A. Kolff, “De familie en onze rivieren”, De Colve, 7 (2002). 5 For Kolff ’s writings on Huizinga, see “Huizinga’s proefschrift en de stemmingen van Tachtig”, in: Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 104 (1989), pp. 380–92; “Huizinga’s Dissertation and the ‘Stemmingen’ of the Literary Movement of the Eighties”, in W. Otterspeer (ed.), Leiden Oriental Connections 1850–1940 (Leiden, 1989), pp. 141–152; “Huizinga en de Vedisch-Brahmaanse Religie: Zijn college als privaat-docent te Amsterdam in 1903–04”, in Hanneke van den Muyzenberg en Thomas de Bruijn (eds), Waarom Sanskrit? Honderdvijfentwintig jaar Sanskrit in Nederland (Kern Institute Miscellanea, 4) (Leiden, 1991), pp. 64–73; “Huizinga and the Vedic-Brahmanic Religion. His first series of lectures at the
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This fascinating picture of Huizinga, struggling to bring his inner, personal mood in tune with indology, derives form Dirk Kolff ’s insightful biographical studies of Huizinga’s journey into the field of history. I feel that the early trials and tribulations of Huizinga the indologist-turned-historian, must have appealed to the imagination of the historian-turned-indologist Dirk Kolff. Although coming from opposite directions, both were to meet each other on one and the same path that linked history to indology, and Europe to India. Of course, they never physically met as they lived almost a century apart from each other. In this century, Kolff was happy to observe, the field of Indian studies had significantly developed: many new facts had come to light and old and unappealing paradigms had been found inadequate. Huizinga, had he lived in Kolff ’s time, would probably have found more than enough to inform and enrich his historical imagination and thus would most probably have stuck to Indian civilisation.6 Nonetheless, one cannot avoid being struck by the common struggle of both Huizinga and Kolff to come to terms with the multiformity of India’s civilisation. Even a century after Huizinga, Kolff was still very much aware that “the assumed unity and continuity of Indian civilisation proves as difficult to fathom as its obvious multiplicity. The sanskritic ‘great tradition’ is not only far from univocal in itself, but also seems scarcely concerned about its inconsistencies or about the recurrent discrepancies between text and reality, precept and practice.”7 Here we almost hear the last sighs of Huizinga the indologist. Although clearly recognising Huizinga’s struggle with Indian history, Kolff, however, decided to stay on. Was it the right decision and was it worthwhile? Before delving into this question, by having a closer look at Kolff ’s contribution to the field of South Asian studies, I would first like to briefly elaborate on this dualism that he seems to share with Huizinga, and perhaps with innumerable other South Asianists, when trying to
University of Amsterdam in 1903–04”, in A.W. van der Hoek, D.H.A. Kolff and M.S. Oort (eds.), Ritual, State and History in South Asia: Essays in Honour of J.C. Heesterman (Leiden, 1992), pp. 578–586. 6 D.H.A. Kolff, “Indische geschiedenis een overwonnen contradictie?”, in Groniek, 92 (1985), pp. 28–9. 7 Taken from Kolff ’s introduction to J.C. Heesterman’s Festschrift (Kolff et al., Ritual, State and History in South Asia, p. ix).
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come to grips with the so-called unity-in-diversity dilemma of Indian civilisation. For Kolff it is not so much the contradiction between impressionism and positivism. This clearly remains Huizinga’s dilemma. But like Huizinga, Kolff does not seem to like the universal, the general and the timeless, but instead has a better taste for the particular, the local and the timely. Here he clearly sympathises with postmodernist thinking as he distrusts the modern mind ever aiming at certainty and finality. This sense of scepticism may be labelled postmodern, but for Kolff it is probably more closely related to sixteenth-century—that is pre-Cartesian—intellectuals like Erasmus and Montaigne, those humanists who still fully respected the complexity and diversity of human existence.8 Anyway for Kolff, this critique on modernity cannot tell the whole story, as he warily realises that Indian studies cannot do without universal concepts. For Indian history, for example, he emphatically makes the point that universal concepts should bring it within the compass of where it belongs: world history. As he further explains, though of universal validity, the relative importance of such concepts in the configuration of Indian society and civilisation may be different from its importance elsewhere, just as the linkages between the elements of the structure may be different in India. Hence Kolff aims at the combination of universal and particular—that is specifically Indian—categories and “to weld them into an image that does justice to the flux as well as the facts of history”.9 Looking at Huizinga and Kolff, one may wonder to what extent this particular problem, to make the chaotic diversity of the Indian experience into some kind of digestible unity, is a consequence of the subject of their inquiries itself. For sure, Kolff was familiar with the idea of the so-called “inner conflict”, the paradoxical dualism of Indian tradition as worked out by his supervisor Jan Heesterman.10 Kolff, although a bit wary of its essentialist undercurrent, clearly
8 This view derives from Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York, 1990). He once mentioned in one of his classes that the book had had a great deal of influence on his thinking. 9 D.H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The Ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 193. 10 See J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society (Chicago, 1985); The Broken World of Sacrifice. An Essay in Ancient Indian Ritual (Chicago, 1993).
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elaborates on this idea in his dissertation, albeit in the specific historical context of the early Mughal period. In a very enlightening venture into the field of Indian law, one finds Kolff struggling with yet another, but closely related Indian incompatibility: that of universal dharma against the practical reality of “customary local lawways”. Although there is a mediating middle ground consisting of “positive royal (and colonial) decrees”, the British sadly fail to recognise this organic whole of the Indian law system.11 Apart from being faced with dualities that are more or less part of Indian civilisation, Kolff experienced another dual conflict in his brief but ongoing involvement with Indo-British colonial history. Now it was “the Battle of the Two Philosophies”, that between Romantic paternalism on the one hand and Benthamite utilitarianism on the other.12 This dualism was suggested by Erik Stokes to divide the two main strands in nineteenth-century colonial thinking. Although very much inspired by Stokes’ work, Kolff again insists in providing a more complicated picture that brings together or goes beyond this “beautifully printed menu”. Again it shows that Kolff feels rather unhappy with too easy models and dichotomies that caricaturise instead of clarify the complexities of the human experience. In this context, as well as on many other occasions, Kolff is not seeking the comfort of the comradely consensus but prefers to be a dissenting voice; its echoes resound in the fields of ethnohistory, colonial history and psychohistory. From history and anthropology to ethnohistory Let me start with Kolff ’s dissertation, finished in 1983 and, in a slightly revised form, published by Cambridge University Press in 1990.13 It grew out of his earlier work on two themes: the history
11
D.H.A. Kolff, “The Indian and the British Law Machines: Some Remarks on Law and Society in British India”, in W.J. Mommsen and J.A. de Moor (eds.), European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th- and 20th-Century Africa and Asia (Oxford and New York, 1992), pp. 201–35 (in particular pp. 206–7). 12 Most explicitly in Kolff, “The Indian and British Law Machines”, p. 221, and again in his inaugural lecture (“A British Indian Circumambulation”, Itinerario, 16,2 (1992), p. 89. This refers to E.T Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959). 13 Respectively “An Armed Peasantry and its Allies: Rajput Tradition and State
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of Bundelkhand in the late-nineteenth century and editorial work on the Dutch chronicle of Mughal history written by the Dutch East India Company servant Francisco Pelsaert in 1626. At first sight these are two completely different research issues. What is the connection between the two? First of all, in both cases Kolff was strongly attracted by the social dimensions of his topic.14 Of course, during the 1960s this was nothing very peculiar considering the rising tide of both social sciences at the university and socialism in the society at large. In South Asian studies also, there was a strong tendency to write social-economic history based on the enormous amount of as yet neglected local settlement records. In this line, Kolff too started in 1968 to collect material from the district archives of Bundelkhand. Reading the results of what must have been a painstaking investigation, one wonders whether Kolff became really that much inspired by the possibilities offered by the archives. Here we already see an attempt to break away from the almost exclusive emphasis on quantitative agrarian economics as presented by the bulk of the official correspondence. Here he was struck by the fact that there was hardly any information of a sociological nature. How to bring life into such dry, unimaginative, statistical material? Nonetheless, he finally succeeded in tracing some socially significant, long-term developments behind these statistics. Looking at the social background of upcoming and declining landholders in the Mau ta˙sìl of Jhansi district, he concluded that the bases on which their power was founded changed significantly during the nineteenth century. The very principle of old Rajput politics, the maintenance of extensive networks of men, now had lost its value. In other words, the all-important change introduced by British rule was not to confer the right of property, but to supplant the diffusion that was bound up with a medieval, dynamic political culture of adaptation and negotiation by the inflexible, legal
Formation in Hindustan, 1450–1850”; and Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. In 2002 the Delhi branch of Oxford University Press issued a paperback. 14 This already appears in his first two publications on the early history of the Dutch Revolt in Leiden when he studies the socio-economic background of religious strife in the city (D.H.A. Kolff, “Libertatis Ergo: De beroerten binnen Leiden in de jaren 1566 en 1567”, Leids Jaarboekje (1966), pp. 118–48; with A.C. Duke, “The Time of Troubles in the County of Holland, 1566–1567”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 82 (1969), pp. 316–37. Cf. J. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477–1806 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 137–54.
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idiom of zamìndàrì right, the so-called “village republics”. At the same time, the tradition of bhùmiyàvat, the struggle for land, was criminalized as dacoity. In the long term, it meant the effective de-Thakurisation of the Mau area: Thakur clans became castes or gotras of castes, stressing the endogamous or exclusive principle rather than the exogamous or inclusive and political idiom of biràderì. Hence, Kolff concludes, rural society was changed radically by being thus frozen into the crystals of settlement rules. Transcending local restrictions was something to be left to moneylenders in the nineteenth century and urban politicians in the twentieth century.15 All this strongly anticipates Kolff ’s dissertation topic as he became aware that there had been an earlier period in which these extensive Rajput networks, in Bundelkhand and elsewhere in Hindustan, had thoroughly influenced the process of state-formation.16 What must have been an intellectual thrill was the sudden awareness that, despite the break of colonial rule, there was in fact a long-term continuity in the military service tradition of Bundelkhand and southern Bihar, connecting the Bhojpuri Ujjainiyas of Sher Shah’s time to the Baksariya sepoys of the British Raj. Hence, we see Kolff ’s nineteenth-century social history of Bundelkhand logically ending up in his sixteenth-century military history of his dissertation. Looking at the roots of this military interest, one also understands why Kolff ’s work was so influential in launching what has—perhaps a bit prematurely—been called the new military history of South Asia; that is the military history with a human, sociological face. Moreover, Kolff ’s focus of the Indian military was instrumental in breaking down the caricature of an idyllic non-violent, pre-colonial Indian society that still reigned at that time.17
15 D.H.A. Kolff, “A Study of Land Transfers in the Mau Tahsil, District Jhansi”, in K.N. Chaudhuri and C.J. Dewey (eds.), Economy and Society. Essays in Indian Economic and Social History (Delhi, 1979), pp. 53–85. See also his “Economische ontwikkeling zonder sociale verandering; de katoen van Hindoestan”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 87 (1974), pp. 545–53. 16 This extensiveness of Indian commercial and military networks was already stressed by Kollf in his first published note on an Indian subject: his “Sanyasi Trader-Soldiers” in Indian Economic and Social History Review, 8,2 (1971), pp. 213–8. 17 For a more detailed discussion on this, see the introduction to Jos J.L. Gommans and D.H.A. Kolff (eds.), Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 1000–1800 (Themes in Indian History) (Oxford, 2001), pp. 1–42. In the field of South Asia’s new military history Kolff ’s contribution to J.A. de Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds.), Imperialism and War. Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa (Leiden, 1989) was also important
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How to fit this in to his work on Pelsaert?18 As indicated already, from the sociological point of view, Pelsaert has much to offer. His reports on the political and commercial history of the Mughal Empire are enriched by detailed descriptions of the real life of nobles, peasants, and merchants, their social customs and their faiths.19 More importantly, though, Pelsaert describes the lively political culture of negotiating and adapting politicians, traders, and peasants, struggling to survive in a highly dynamic Mughal society. As a consequence, though widely different areas of enquiry, both the studies on Bundelkhand and Pelsaert suggested questions about the traditions of Rajput service to Muslim and colonial rulers and, more generally, about the importance of military earnings in the survival strategies of the NorthIndian peasantry. But this required an entirely different theoretical working kit than the existing, rather worn-out anthropological apparatus still grounded in British census report classification. It was in this context that “the military labour market” of Hindustan emerged as a more useful research concept than older, static categories like caste or the Asiatic Mode of Production. In fact, the military labour market brought together the survival strategies of both the peasantry and the empire, ideally uniting elites and subalterns. As such, it changed the whole perception on medieval Indian states. For example, the perception of the Mughal Empire changed from a highly centralised, despotic kind of state imposing a unilateral “law and order” on the peasant strata of society into a fluid polity held together by a political economy that was constantly fed by flows of honours, gifts and intelligence.20 Mughal power was in its essence a Personenverbandstaat in which caste, as a description of the social
(“The End of an Ancien Régime Colonial War in India, 1798–1818”, pp. 22–49). Kolff elaborated on the theme of Indian violence in his “Geweld en geweldloosheid: de twee gezichten van India”, Reflector (February 1987), pp. 226–31. For his strong dismissal of the idea that “rational terror” in South Asia is an imported, western phenomenon, see his “Terreurfantasie op het ISIM”, Mare, 8 (18 October 2001) and 9 (1 November 2001). 18 D.H.A. Kolff and H.W. van Santen (eds), De geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal Indië, 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie (Werken uitgegeven door de Linschoten-Vereeniging, LXXXI) (The Hague, 1979). 19 It also gives us a most lively insight into the Christian community or “nation” in seventeenth-century Surat. For this, see D.H.A. Kolff, “La ‘Nation’ Chrétienne à Surate au début du XVIIème Siècle”, in J.L. Miège (ed.), La femme dans les sociétés coloniales (Aix-en-Provence, 1984), pp. 7–16. 20 Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 19.
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reality of Mughal India in its entirety, obscured rather than illuminated political and social dynamics.21 In fact, Kolff found that caste and other social identities were not yet those rigid and ascriptive social phenomena as analysed for the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries but they were still open, conscriptive categories and, as such, most fitting corollaries of the extensive and ever-shifting alliances that dominated the military labour market. But Kolff would not be Kolff if he had not attempted to combine the universal concept of a labour market into something specifically Indian. Hence, in stead of caste, tribe or nation, Kolff turned to the idea of naukarì, a term that originated from a Central Asian context but was widely current in medieval Hindustan to describe the negotiable service of a free retainer to his master-cum-employer.22 According to Kolff, naukarì was the driving force of groups and networks of groups participating in the military labour market. Apart from studying the usual Persian chronicles and European travelogues, Kolff turned towards the colonial material he knew so well from his earlier enquiries: the enormous amount of information gathered in district gazetteers and numerous volumes on tribes and castes. Moreover, in his eagerness to find proper Indian notions and to come as close as possible to the village level, he enthusiastically looked at the Indian folk traditions collected and studied by indologists like Grierson and Vaudeville. Without too much hyperbole, one may say that for medieval North-Indian history, this combination of sources was not only unprecedented but also proved extremely fruitful. As a result, we rediscover concepts like the military labour market and naukarì in the guise of the viraha, i.e. the separation of a woman and her husband, a theme so evocatively expressed in India’s numerous folk songs, ballads and legends.23 In this fascinating exercise, soon to be coined ethnohistory, Kolff not only managed to connect the universal (military labour market) with the specifically Indian (naukarì) but also to bring real village life into these concepts. Perhaps, one may even say that, with the introduction of ethnohistory, Kolff succeeds where Huizinga had failed.24
21 Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 30. Probably, the use of a German concept derives from Kolff ’s classes with the Leiden Germanist Bas Schot. 22 Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, pp. x, 20, 25, 76, 79–82, 181–3, 193. 23 Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, pp. 74–85. 24 At about the same time, Nicholas Dirks opened up southern India for ethno-
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Kolff ’s dissertation cannot be understood in isolation from the academic context in which it came to fruition. Here, I feel, it should be acknowledged that Kolff worked under the strong influence of his supervisor Jan Heesterman. As we have indicated already, Kolff ’s attempt to combine the universal with the particular was partly inspired by Heesterman’s observation of India’s “inner conflict”.25 It implied the inner paradox of Indian civilisation which cannot and will not realise in this world a transcendent ideal that exactly renounces that world. Like his Leiden colleague at that time, André Wink, Kolff succeeded in translating this idea into the practice of medieval Indian history. This is as true for Wink’s concept of fitna, as for Kolff ’s military labour market.26 In both we find the rather abstract concept of the inner conflict at work in the daily practice of medieval Indian politics. To use his own phrase, Kolff demonstrated “that the complementary alternation between the roles of householder and wanderer, suggested by Heesterman for a pre-‘axial age’ India, remains of uninterrupted importance throughout ancient and medieval North Indian history”.27 Again, this achievement was the result of Kolff ’s ethnohistorical combination of historical, indological and anthropological sources. Overall, I feel, Kolff ’s dissertation was a great success thanks to its highly original and innovative approach. To quote a reviewer, the book had “provided revisionists from a number of fields with a convenient starting point for the renewal of their enquiries”.28 It should be stressed, though, that the bulk of the book is not about method at all. Most of the book provides a great deal of historical detail, in particular about the pre- and early-Mughal working of the military labour market. Most of the criticism was directed at his uncritical extrapolation of what was considered the spatially and temporarily restricted case of sixteenth-century southern Hindustan. André Wink, for example, would have wished Kolff to have ventured into a more elaborated and precise discussion on the developments in
history (N.B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown. Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge, 1987). Perhaps one can say that it was the “anthropologist among the historians” Bernard Cohn who paved the way for both Kolff and Dirks. 25 Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 193. 26 For Wink, see his Land and Sovereignty in India. Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-century Maratha Svaràjya (Cambridge, 1986). 27 Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 199. 28 R.S. Cooper in Modern Asian Studies, 26,1 (1992), p. 208.
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Rajasthan.29 Be as it may, Wink, studying the eighteenth-century Marathas, can only but agree with Kolff ’s overall conclusions connected with the political behaviour in the medieval Indian military labour market.30 Although acclaiming his innovative approach, Seema Alavi disputes Kolff ’s claim that the military labour market was declining under British rule. She denies such a break when she insists, with other revisionists like C.A. Bayly, that the Company’s participation intensified the dynamism of the market and made it even more volatile. At the same time, though, she also denies Kolff ’s argument for the long-term continuity of the role of the armed peasant. In this instance, Alavi sees a sharp caesura between the armed peasant of the sixteenth century and the professional peasant soldier, or sepoy, of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For Alavi precisely this break explains why ethnic and social identities changed the way Kolff had indicated but had not quite demonstrated.31 Nonetheless, the work by Alavi and other historians show how Kolff ’s notion of open and negotiable social categories has opened up an entirely new agenda for research.32 Apart from a few critical comments by these historians, who both have been working on the much-debated eighteenth century, the dissertation has been very well received by historians working on the earlier Mughal period. One of its chapters has been incorporated in a recent collection of influential contributions to the field of Mughal studies.33 As the “revisionist” editors claim, it was to show that the ability to command the services of free-floating military groups was a key element in the pre-Mughal era of precociously market-driven polities based on horizontal ties, both of marriage and negotiation.34 29
The Journal of Asian Studies, 52,3 (1993), p. 759. The close agreement between Kolff and Wink in this regard is also demonstrated in P. Price, Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 18–9. 31 Studies in History, 9,1 (n.s.) (1993), pp. 153–6. 32 S. Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company. Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770 –1830 (Delhi, 1995). Two examples of his influence in other studies focusing on the construction of identities are W.R. Pinch, Peasants and Monks in British India (Berkeley, 1996) and even more recently P. Constable, “The Marginalization of a Dalit Martial Race in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Western India”, The Journal of Asian Studies, 60,2 (2001), pp. 439–78. 33 “A Warlord’s Fresh Attempt at Empire”, Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), The Mughal State 1526–1750 (Themes in Indian History) (Delhi, 1998), pp. 75–114. 34 Alam and Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, p. 21. 30
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Among Mughal historians, especially Douglas Streusand’s work extensively draws on Kolff ’s conclusions about the important role of the armed peasantry in the North-Indian military labour market.35 Somewhat remarkably, considering the fact that it undermines the idea of a highly-centralised Mughal state, the book has also been positively reviewed by the doyen of Mughal studies, Irfan Habib. Although he criticises Kolff for using only printed sources—“among these he forages widely and insightfully”—the material from other, documentary evidence “is likely to support, rather than throw doubt on Kolff ’s main thesis”. Rather less surprisingly, the Aligarh historian, and thus very much against current revisionist opinion, is particularly happy with the discontinuity that, according to Kolff, followed on the rural demilitarisation under British rule and turned zamìndàrs from armed magnates into landlords.36 Considering the turbulence of the historical debate in the 1980’s, the book’s acclaim on the part of both Aligarh and revisionist scholars is indeed a most remarkable feat of scholarship. Comparative colonial studies During the first decade after his research trip to Jhansi (1968–70) and his appointment as a lecturer at the Kern Institute of Leiden University (1971), Kolff was working on his dissertation which he defended in 1983. Meanwhile, in 1979, he published his article on Bundelkhand land transfers and edited, with one of his students Hans van Santen, Pelsaert’s writings for the Linschoten Vereniging. In that same year, he wrote an article in which, for the first time, he made a few preliminary comments comparing the colonial administration of British India with that of the Dutch East Indies. This he did mainly through the eyes of the Dutch colonial administrator Van Hogendorp who on his 1875 mission to India was to report on British methods to calculate, register and collect the land revenue.
35 Douglas E. Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Delhi, 1989), pp. 41–3; 45–6; 73, 81, 144. My own recent survey Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire 1500–1700 (London, 2002) extensively builds on Kolff ’s concept of the “military labour market”. 36 In Irfan Habib (ed.), Medieval India 1: Researches in the History of India 1200–1750 (Delhi, 1992), pp. 210–11. Remarkably, in the same volume M. Athar Ali, another Aligarh scholar, fiercely reviews Streusand’s work (pp. 216–7).
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In this article, Kolff, while working with the equally dry facts and figures of the Bundelkhand district archives, must have sympathised with Van Hogendorp’s aim to use endless and complicated statistics to come as close as possible to the social and economic reality on the ground. In his conclusion Kolff anticipates his later theme, published in several comparative articles, that European categories like conservative and liberal did not count as much in the East as at home. On the contrary, both in India and Indonesia, the character of the colonial administration was strongly determined by the local, social-economic circumstances.37 Kolff ’s first strides into comparative colonial history were soon to be further stimulated by the so-called Cambridge-Delhi-LeidenYogyakarta conferences, taking place during the mid-1980’s, which specifically aimed at a comparison between the Indian and Indonesian experience with colonialism.38 In this stimulating academic context, Kolff, at one of these instances together with the Indonesianists Cees Fasseur, threw doubt over the widely held opinion, informed by Furnivall and Emerson, that the British colonial officials were first of all magistrates and relatively distant “referees in a boxing match” while the Dutch civil servants were welfare officers, planners and social engineers. According to Kolff, this picture of British indirect rule versus Dutch direct rule was far too simplistic. He stressed that similarities and differences between the British and the Dutch were rooted in the Asian societies they ruled. For him dwelling on the different national characteristics of the two soon comes down to sentimental twaddle. For Kolff there are at least two important structural differences between Indian and Indonesian societies that have caused the two
37 D.H.A. Kolff, “De kontroleur G.K. van Hogendorp (1844–1879): Een enthousiast statisticus”, in F. van Anrooij, D.H.A. Kolff, J.T.M. van Laanen, and G.J. Telkamp (eds.), Between People and Statistics. Essays on Modern Indonesian History presented to P. Creutzberg (The Hague, 1979), pp. 175–206. 38 D.H.A. Kolff, “Administrative Tradition and the Dilemma of Colonial Rule: an Example of the Early 1830s”, in C.A. Bayly and D.H.A. Kolff (eds.), Two Colonial Empires: Comparative Essays on the History of India and Indonesia in the Nineteenth Century (Dordrecht, 1986), pp. 95–109; C. Fasseur and D.H.A. Kolff, “Some Remarks on the Development of Colonial Bureaucracies in India and Indonesia”, in Itinerario, 10,1 (1986), pp. 31–55. Two years later he wrote with V.J.H. Houben a similarly comparative essay, about the pre-colonial period: “Between Empire Building and State Formation. Official Elites in Java and Mughal India”, Itinerario, 12,1 (1988), pp. 165–194.
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types of European rule to vary significantly. Firstly, Indian society was more complex and its economy more dynamic from the very beginning of colonialism. Secondly, whereas Java in the nineteenth century, prodded by the Dutch, exported a large proportion of its agricultural produce, in India colonial rule could not afford to base itself on the management of exports, always a small percentage of the gross national product, but assumed a fiscal rather than a commercial character. Hence, the Dutch were primarily port-based entrepreneurs, the most successful shahbandars of Java, whereas the British were compelled to become tax gatherers, the most efficient dìwàns of the Mughal Empire.39 Here we see the old stereotype turned upside down: the Dutch becoming the rather detached kontroleurs building on the cooperation of the priyayi aristocracy, the British becoming locally involved collectors of the land revenue pushing the traditional Indian aristocracy back to the indirectly ruled Indian princely states. But even within British-ruled India proper, distinctions should be made, for example, between the administration of the Non-Regulated area of the Panjab and the Regulated province of Bengal, the first coming much closer to the experience on Java.40 Apart from these spatial discontinuities, it was important to see differences in time as well. For example, the distinction between the two systems becomes most articulate around 1830: the British turning to a more utilitarian kind of interventionism, the Dutch introducing the indirect approach of the cultivation system. After the Mutiny of 1857, British “social engineering” was somewhat modified but in the 1870’s Van Hogendorp still felt tired of British rules and technicalities, longing back for the veranda of his house in Java, discussing and ridiculing all these formalities with the regent (bupati ), his aristocratic complement in the dualistic bureaucracy of the Dutch.41 All this changed again at the end of the nineteenth century, following Dutch ethical policy, when foreign observers in Java became impressed by “the omnipresence of the Dutch government and its
39 Fasseur and Kolff, “Some Remarks”, pp. 32–3. This difference props up again in Kolff ’s recent survey “De Engelse Oostindische Compagnie”, in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 115,4 (2002), pp. 544–65. 40 Fasseur and Kolff, “Some Remarks”, pp. 33–4. 41 Kolff, “Administrative Tradition”, p. 96. Here, with Van Hogendorp, Kolff appears to contradict himself as he first praises Java for its “smaller distance between Europeans and natives” (see Kolff, “De kontroleur”, p. 200).
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continuous interference with the Javanese society”.42 For Kolff, though, even the most modern of Dutch administrators, the likes of Douwes Dekker alias Multatuli, remained more aloof from local society than those most paternalistic of British collectors in the tradition of Bird and Thomason. Hence he makes the illuminating observation that, as a consequence’ and despite Multatuli, Dutch colonial literature lacks the personal intimacy as expressed by authors like Sleeman, Kipling and Forster.43 No doubt, since Furnivall’s time, these observations were big steps forward. But it also raised new questions about the traditional perception of colonial rule in India, straddling between Stokes’ two philosophies of Romantic paternalism and Benthamite utilitarianism or, alternatively, between Dewey’s “Gospel of Uplift” and “Cult of Friendship”.44 For Kolff, it appears that at the root of all this was the psychological dilemma of colonial rule: “whether to refer to European values and comradeship as an inspiration for rule or to open one’s mind to what the institutions and dynamics of Asian societies seemed to call for”.45 This implied, for example, that modern statistical surveys could be as attractive to the utilitarian as to the romantic mind, the first in order to achieve certainty and finality, the latter in order to acquire an instrument “from below” to do justice to the historically defined indigenous institutions.46 But he wondered to what extent these different colonial mentalities were homemade or derived from circumstances in India. In his articles he clearly tends to the latter position but it may be too early to formulate definite conclusions as these questions will probably be more thoroughly discussed in his forthcoming work. From history and psychology to psychohistory? In 1991 Kolff succeeded Jan Heesterman to the Leiden chair of South Asian history. One year later, he became the director of the
42
Fasseur and Kolff, “Some Remarks”, p. 40. D.H.A. Kolff, “Waarom was er geen Multatuli in Brits-Indië?”, in Theo D’haen en Gerard Termorshuizen (eds), De geest van Multatuli: Proteststemmen in vroegere Europese koloniën (Semaian 17) (Leiden, 1998), pp. 233–44. 44 Kolff, “Waarom was er geen Multatuli”, pp. 240–3. This refers to C. Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes. The Mind of the Indian Civil Service (London, 1993). 45 Kolff, “Administrative Tradition”, p. 108. 46 Kolff, “Administrative Tradition”, p. 107. 43
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Centre of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS). This meant that, until he left that job in 1997, he was almost fully occupied by administrative responsibilities. In his few publications of the 1990’s he primarily elaborates on his earlier work. It was only after 1997 that Kolff found time to do research again, both in London and in India.47 Now having more leisure as an emeritus, his second book is to be expected rather sooner than later. Looking at his beautifully-written inaugural lecture of 1991, one may detect a few hints about the course he is to embark on.48 Kolff ’s current work is mainly of a biographical nature as he extensively uses the personal diary and letters, the official correspondence, and the public essays of Frederick Shore, a colonial civil servant during the first part of the nineteenth century. In this material, we are once again confronted by the contradiction that although Shore is aware that Europeans and Indians are living under one and the same heaven, a universe which could be described in one language, he also knows that to understand India demands a palette all its own. Kolff agrees with Shore that this palette is not primarily about those endless nineteenth-century reifications of India, in censuses, in gazetteers, language descriptions, archaeological surveys, ethnographical works, all of which left no caste or sect unnoticed but which did not yield an insight into Indian consciousness or man, to use the Indian word preferred by Shore. Taking up the example of Tulsidas’ circumambulation of Lake Manasarovar, Kolff invites us to accompany him in a circumambulation of Shore’s psyche and personality. This in order to construct, like Shore himself, a BritishIndian discourse that is not confined within a colonial horizon, but that is open to Indian notions and to Indians themselves. In order to succeed, the historian should not only look into the periphery of the colonial system and study such dissenting outsiders like Shore, but also into the periphery of his own discipline. In this regard, Kolff expects a great deal from psychologists, non-western psychiatrists and
47 For this he took up a sabbatical leave of 6 months that was spent at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) at Wassenaar. For a brief, personal report of this period, see Van Delft, “De vrijgestelde onderzoeker”, p. 11. 48 D.H.A. Kolff, “Een Brits-Indische omwandeling” (Oratie Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1991), subsequently published in De Gids, 156 (1993), pp. 635–45. My references are to the English translation published as “A British Indian Circumambulation” in Itinerario, 16,2 (1992), pp. 85–100.
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novelists as they can help the historian to understand some of the pathological ingredients that accompany the inevitable alienating relationship between the colonised and the colonisers.49 How can we expect Shore, as a British outsider, to lead us out of the colonial predicament and to restore, as it were, Indian agency? Of course, this is something that is not yet fully articulated but his lecture does suggest that Shore, by always standing in front of a mirror, not only came face to face with himself—thereby giving us a better understanding of the colonisers’ society—but also recognised the multitude of images India reflected in his direction. While going native like a Rustam or a Sufi pìr, he listened to the best of his ability to the Indians he met and did justice to their man or manas, their self, their consciousness. Kolff acknowledges, though, that even this cannot offer more than “a circumambulation and a variety of reflections on the mystery”.50 Looking at the methodological message of his lecture, one gets the impression that, after successfully venturing into ethnohistory, so connecting history with anthropology, Kolff now strives to take up another new field, that of psycho-history connecting history with psychology. As said already, this brings him very close to postmodernism.51 As a fellow historian, one should perhaps be a bit concerned that this approach will rather mystify than clarify the issues at stake. Kolff may sympathise with Shore but should be careful not to identify with him. This admittedly rather positivistic critique may sound outdated but is still relevant as Kolff admits that Shore himself attempted to understand the Indian conscience. If the latter exists at all, one would like to know what is true understanding and what is construction. This nearly comes down to the old question of how we can have universal knowledge of something that is specifically Indian?
49 Kolff mentions the French work of Mannoni, Fanon and Memmi and the Indian work of Sudhir Kakar and Ashis Nandi. In this context he also speaks favorably of Jan Breman’s work on Dutch colonial excesses (“British Indian Circumambulation”, p. 92). 50 Kolff, “British Indian Circumambulation”, p. 97. In another context, Shore’s problematic involvement with pre-colonial Indian society seems to reappear in Kolff ’s recent comments on the Dutch novelist Jacob Haafner (“Jacob Haafner’s Journey in a Palanquin: A Passionate Farewell from a Colonial Ancien Régime”, in D.W. Loenne (hrsg), Tohfa-e-Dil. Festschrift Helmut Nespital, Bd 2: Kulturwissenschaften (Reinbek, 2001), pp. 727–47, more in particular p. 746. 51 Kolff himself mentions Lacan and Levinas in this context (“British Indian Circumambulation”, p. 92).
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Whereas in his dissertation, Kolff came up with the combination of military labour market and naukarì, one wonders whether, by following in the footsteps of Tulsidas, he is not giving up, like Huizinga, the first by being fully immersed in the latter. But surely Kolff will come up with another convenient, mediating middle ground. Does this imply a South Asian variety of psychohistory? One cannot but most eagerly await Kolff ’s forthcoming observations on this.52
2. Circumambulations in South Asian History In the first part of this introductory essay, Jos Gommans has commented in some detail on the considerable diversity and expanse of the canvas around which the scholarly work of Dirk Kolff has been carried out over the last three decades and more. The essays written by his friends and colleagues in his honour and included in this collection cover an even wider range both in terms of the themes handled as well as the time period spanned. It is, I believe, a great tribute to Kolff ’s scholarship that in spite of their wide range, each of the contributions has something or the other to do with Kolff ’s writing and research. The unifying theme of the first block of six essays—those by Heesterman, Van Santen, Barendse, De Lannoy, s’Jacob and Bhattacharya—is the various facets—ranging from the military to the economic to the diplomatic and to the religious—of the European presence in the Indian subcontinent in the pre-colonial and the early colonial period. Jan Heesterman’s is by far the most wide ranging of these articulating and making an innovative use of his well-known thesis on the frontier and the interior in relation to the spread of Islam in the Indian Ocean region. Heesterman argues that it was in the context of increasing maritime activity that Islam expanded along the coasts of the Ocean. The coastal culture, he points out, was characterized by openness and flexibility in contrast to the restrictive nature of the inland agrarian regimes. But the Indian or the Southeast Asian seaports were not a particularly fertile ground for 52 A first flavoring of what is forthcoming we may consult his “De bajonet erin! Een kleine oorlog in Brits-Indië”, in A. Huusen, J. de Jong, G. Prince (eds.), Cultuurcontacten: Ontmoetingen tussen culturen in historisch perspectief (Historische Studies IV) (Groningen, 2001), pp. 123–36.
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the expansion of Islam which “like other scriptural religions needed durable centres for maintaining, developing, transmitting and propagating its scriptural tenets”. The absence of such centres on the coast prevented the availability of stable patronage and generous endowments which were necessary conditions for Islam’s flowering. The inland agrarian zones in the subcontinent were also not conducive to the promotion of the religion. Barred from the agrarian zones, Islam had to create its own permanent space in the open frontier where there was land suitable to be turned into arable. In tune with the argument of Richard Eaton, Heesterman suggests that the agents bringing this about were in the first place Sufi “holy men” and their followers. “So Sufism”, he concludes, “was practically predestined to be the vehicle of the propagation of Islam, penetrating into the agrarian interior and pushing forward the agricultural frontier”. In his contribution, Hans van Santen delves into the economic as well as the political domain of the Dutch East India Company’s operations in northern India in the seventeenth century. He begins by talking about the tight rope walking that the Company was obliged to do in its quest of achieving a finely tuned balance between its objective of attaining a position of differential advantage over rival Indian merchants moving in the direction of monopoly even if violence had to be used in the process, and the necessity of maintaining the goodwill of the Mughal Indian authorities to be able to engage successfully in its trading activities in the Empire. To Van Santen’s justified emphasis on the Mughal state’s realization of the superior naval power of the Europeans as an important factor in conditioning its own response structure, one might add that the sizeable accretion to imperial revenues in the form of customs duties paid by the Europeans coupled with their import into the Empire of enormous quantities of precious metals critically needed for running the Empire’s monetary system from Europe as well as other parts of Asia were by no means insignificant considerations at work. In the context of the procurement of textiles, Van Santen correctly emphasizes the important regional differences within the Empire. For example, the buoyant market one encounters in Gujarat is conspicuous by its absence in Awadh in the interior. Another important area that Van Santen comments upon is the relationship between the Company and the Mughal elite not only in the political domain but also in the economic. He points out, for example, that the investment in the procurement of textiles in Awadh was channelled at
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Agra through a daughter of Shah Jahan who had her jàgìr in Awadh. There were also cases of the Company borrowing directly from the imperial treasury. However, for fear that such interaction might eventually have undesirable consequences, the scale of such contacts was deliberately kept limited. Finally, in an important case study of a major Surat magnate, Virji Vohra, Van Santen demonstrates in some detail the nature of the complex relationship between Indian merchants, the Mughal state officials and the European trading companies. The essay by René Barendse is concerned mainly with the role of the indigenous soldiers in maintaining order in eighteenth-century Portuguese Goa and adjoining territories. He begins by using the notion of the military fiscal state and argues that it applied to the Portuguese state in India as much as it did to the English and the Dutch in India and elsewhere in Asia. The 1762 annexation of provinces adjacent to Goa which had effectively tripled the size of the Estado da Índia territories necessitated a substantial accretion to the military forces available to it. Barendse discusses in some detail the distinguishing characteristic features such as amenability to discipline etc. of the different companies of the Estado forces. He argues that the new sepoy force in Portuguese service from the 1770s onwards represented a transition from the ancien régime to the military fiscal state in Portuguese India. He thus disagrees with the hypothesis of continuity in this respect between the pre-colonial and the colonial periods. There are according to him two basic differences between the situation in the seventeenth century and that in the eighteenth. One new feature was that the frontier raids were now financed through permanently assigning the incomes of villages in Bicholim to the invading army, a practice that did not exist in the seventeenth century. The second difference was the taking of hostages which was also a new phenomenon. The contribution of Mark de Lannoy is also concerned with military history in the eighteenth century though the corporate enterprise discussed this time is the Dutch East India Company on the Malabar Coast, the only region of the subcontinent in which the Company enjoyed territorial rights. Following the loss of the fortress at Colachel to the Travancore forces in 1740, a trial of the President of the Dutch Council of War in Malabar, Captain Johannes Hackert and of Andries Leslorant, the engineer who had been responsible for the fortifications at the Colachel fort was conducted between 1740 and 1742 by a Council of War established by Stein van
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Gollenesse, the Dutch Commander of Malabar. De Lannoy’s paper contains interesting details regarding the process and clearly brings out the weaknesses and the deficiencies characterizing the trial. In May 1742, Leslorant was sent to Ceylon and in December of the same year Hackert was sent to Batavia but the final outcome of the trials is not recorded. The following two papers—by Hugo s’Jacob and Bhaswati Bhattacharya—have a great deal in common in so far as both are concerned with the very early years of the English take-over of Bengal and attempts by groups adversely affected in the process to try and restore the status quo ante. s’Jacob’s contribution deals with the little known attempt made by the Governor-General and Council of the Dutch East India Company at Batavia in 1759 to dislodge the English from their newly found position of authority and privilege in Bengal following the victory at Plassey two years earlier. The adventure was both ill-conceived and disastrously executed but it nevertheless merits notice because, different from Malabar where the VOC enjoyed territorial rights, this particular episode constituted the only organized attempt by the Company to employ naval-cum-land forces in the Indian subcontinent. s’Jacob deals with the matter in great detail. He first establishes the critical role of Bengal in the overall EuroAsian and intra-Asian trading network of the Company through the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. The role of Bengal opium as an important generator of revenue both for the Company as well as for its employees is also brought out clearly. While until the 1740s, the employees participated in the opium trade on a clandestine basis, this was done legally following the establishment of the Opium Society in Batavia in 1745. All this was gravely endangered by the English take-over of Bengal in 1757. s’Jacob provides a blow by blow account of both the conception and the execution of the project and argues that given the nature and extent of the information available to the authorities at Batavia, particularly in relation to the strength of the English in Bengal, the decision to send an expedition was not really as bizarre as is generally believed to have been the case in the literature. Following the so-called “Plassey Revolution”, the English East India Company had replaced Siraj al-Daula as the Nawab of Bengal by the puppet Mir Jafar. Not long after, however, the latter was also replaced by his son-in-law Mir Qasim (1760–64). Bhaswati Bhattacharya’s contribution in this volume deals with an Armenian adven-
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turer Khoja Gregory alias Gurgin Khan who had started his career as a merchant but who eventually ended up as the principal military confidant of Mir Qasim and the commander-in-chief of his army. This man has almost found a place in the folklore of Bengal figuring prominently in one of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s novels Chandrasekhar. The novelist portrays the man essentially as an opportunist with an eye on the throne of Bengal. Be as it may, Gurgin Khan at any rate played an important role in modernizing Mir Qasim’s army in the latter’s quest to get rid of the English yoke. In August 1763, however, Gurgin Khan was murdered while in the entourage of Mir Qasim between Monghyr and Patna. Was Mir Qasim himself behind the murder? Bhattacharya speculates in detail on this point. The next block of three papers—by Digby, Gommans and Schokker—belong to a very different genre. They deal basically with issues of kingship, legitimacy, rebellion, slavery, military recruitment and so forth in parts of northern India, now broadly in the state of Uttar Pradesh and which Kolff in his work on the ethnohistory of the military labour market had termed Hindustan. Simon Digby’s essay deals with the revolt against the Indo-Afghans which temporarily dispossessed the Lodis of their capital of Jawnpur shortly after the accession of Sultan Sikandar (1489 AD). In reconstructing the event, Digby uses, among other sources, a Sufi biographical work and a collection of orally-derived anecdotes regarding the Indo-Afghans and their campaigns. Digby’s argument is that effective military manpower could be raised from the armed peasantry of Awadh at the time of the rebellion to establish an effective administration over the heartland of the Jawnpur Sultanate north of the Ganga and that this military force could be deployed only by a leader who had also established a defensive military base south of the Ganga. The piece by Jos Gommans on the Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad ties in rather neatly with Dirk Kolff ’s work on the military labour market. Indeed, the history of the Bangash Nawabs is an interesting case study of Indian military slavery. Being introduced from a Turko-Persian context, military slaves were instrumental in conquering and establishing a new homeland for their Afghan masters. The first Muslim raids into India in the twelfth century and the eventual conquest of parts of northern India at the end of the thirteenth century was achieved by Turkish mamlùks or bandagàn in the service of the Ghaznavid and Ghurid dynasties in Afghanistan and Khorasan.
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Under the Mughals, slaves played only a minor part both in the administration as well as in the army. According to Abul Fazl, Akbar believed that mastership belonged to no one but God. He, therefore, borrowed the term chela from the Hindu bhakti and the Indianized Sufi tradition, signifying the complete attachment of a faithful disciple or pupil (chela or murìd) to a “venerable”, holy leader ( guru or pìr). Here the relationship is not one of ownership but one of unqualified and unconditional love. In due course, though, chela became the current Indian name for a mamlùk-like or ∞ulàm-like slave. This departure from a Turko-Persian Islamic expression reflected not only the reduced importance of slaves under the Mughals but also Akbar’s reorientation to an Indianized Indo-Islamic culture. Gommans argues that India’s short-lived experience of the mamlùk system owed a great deal to the vibrancy of the extensive free labour market in the subcontinent. The large availability of cheap military labour and of ready cash to pay for it in a relationship of naukarì made slavery increasingly redundant. The opportunities offered by the naukarì relationship brought to the Bangash Nawabs enormous riches and honours which further strengthened their position both in Farrukhabad and among the Mughal nobility. The essay by G.H. Schokker is concerned with the legitimation of kingship in Bundelkhand. Schokker provides a detailed analysis of two genealogies written in Braj, a variant of Hindi, as source material on the legitimacy of the Bundela kingship. Both the genealogies claim the descent of the Bundelas from the Gaharavaras whose last king Jayachandra was defeated and killed by Muhammad Ghuri at Candravara in the Etawah district. Schokker questions the validity of this claim. He also suggests that the manner in which the Bundela genealogies seek to legitimise kingship has a close parallel in the tradition of the Rathor Rajputs at Jodhpur similarly claiming descent from the Gaharavara king Jayachandra. The following two contributions—the ones by Kooiman and the Rudolphs—take one well into the heart of British India. The paper of Dick Kooiman deals with the short military career of Walter Dickens, one of the sons of the author Charles Dickens, in the subcontinent in the immediate post-Mutiny years. The paper contributes significantly to an analysis of the process of patronage in influential quarters that was a necessary precondition to finding a position in the service of the East India Company. Dickens arrived in Calcutta on 30 August 1857 just as the Mutiny had gotten underway and
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was assigned to Her Majesty’s 42nd Highlanders. His regiment participated in the battle of Kanpur (December 1857) and took part in the relief of Lucknow (March 1858). Young Walter gained rapid promotion as well as a medal for his part in the Lucknow operations. But both his career and life were rather short. He rapidly contracted large debts, fell ill and died in India in February 1864. Kooiman’s account also uses Charles Dickens’ fairly close personal connection with India in the form mainly of several of his sons including Walter trying their luck out there to delineate his projection of the country in his writings. The fact that Walter was in the thick of the Mutiny made Dickens take an unusual amount of interest in the reports regarding the uprising. News regarding English women and children being massacred was evidently behind Dickens’ outburst of October 1857 in which he declared that in case he had held the office of the Commander-in-Chief in India, he would have done his utmost “to exterminate the Race upon which the Stain of the late cruelties rested”. Exaggerated notions of loyalty often evoke strange reactions from otherwise sensible individuals! The contribution by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph on Colonel James Tod’s classic Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan brings out in sharp relief Tod’s seminal contribution in facilitating the understanding of aspects of Indian society in the great tradition of British administrators-cum-scholars such as William Moreland, Malcolm Darling and many others. Tod arrived in Calcutta in 1799 at the age of seventeen to begin service in the East India Company’s Bengal army. For a long period of twenty four years, he served the Company in central and western India in military, surveying, intelligence and political capacities. In 1818 he became the Company’s first political agent at Mewar. It was during the following four years that he collected the enormous amount of material for his Annals. In the process he mastered Mewar’s language, culture and history. Most of the writing of the Annals was done in London between 1823 and 1831 when he held the position of the first Librarian of the recently founded Royal Asiatic Society. The first volume of the Annals was published in 1829 while the second appeared in 1832. This is not only a work of considerable scholarship about history and ethnography and legend and myth but also as a text which can be explicated as intellectual history. In the course of his Indian career, Tod was also instrumental in having geographical material relating chiefly to the region between the Indus (in the northwest) and Bundelkhand, the
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Jamuna and the Narbada (in the east and south) collected and preserved. The Rudolphs also credit him with creating the first British intelligence service in India, “a service that proved decisive in making the Company and via the Company Britain the victors in the contest with the Marathas to succeed the Mughals as the hegemonic power on the Indian subcontinent”. The following two papers—by Victor van Bijlert and Jan Brouwer respectively—are essentially theoretical pieces. Van Bijlert’s essay on the Idea of Modernity is an exhaustive review of the literature on this theme. Van Bijlert also discusses in some detail specific issues such as the eurocentricity of the notion of modernity as opposed to the more reasonable view of modernity “as the multicultural mixture that one can experience in large cities such as Rio, Calcutta or Mombasa”. Some other issues considered are modernity and ethics and modernity and cultural studies. Another area considered at some length is the relationship between modernity, colonialism and nationalism with special reference to the case of India. Jan Brouwer provides an interesting anthropological perspective on the relationship between modern media and indigenous knowledge in India and Europe. He argues that the advent of television and internet make for a new cognitive revolution: television being effective in the field of life style but not in that of world view while internet technology is to be seen as a means of reinforcing indigenous knowledge. The last contribution in the volume is an excellent survey by Dietmar Rothermund of military organization in South Asian history over a very long period of time starting in the pre-Christian era and going on to the present day. The instruments of warfare that Rothermund discusses include weapons as well as animals such as elephants and horses used extensively in warfare. He also considers the social consequences of warfare as well as its impact on the composition and the functions of warrior elites. The first professional warrior elite of South Asia was that of the people who called themselves àrya (noble). Their main instrument of warfare was the chariot and Rothermund goes into a fair amount of detail on chariot warfare including its impact on the stratification of early Aryan society. The nobility consisted of a hereditary segment from which the kings were drawn and an inferior one appointed in consideration of its military skills. The nature of this type of early kingship is reflected in the rituals preceding the a≤vamedha used as the mechanism for establishing the king’s sovereignty. Later when the
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war-elephant replaced the chariot, say under the Mauryas, the nature of social stratification also changed. Imperial officers rather than “noble” warriors were the new ruling elite. With the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the war elephant was replaced by the cavalry as the principal instrument of warfare. The system of military feudalism based on the assignment of revenue grants (iq†à' ) which were given to officers for supporting cavalry troops did have a certain amount of centralizing effect. This became the precursor of the Mughal manßabdàrì system. In the domain of weaponry, field-artillery remained the mainstay of Mughal power throughout. The principal distinguishing feature of warfare under the East India Company was the rise of a modern infantry. It was only much later that a new type of armament—the tank—was introduced in the British Indian army. The officer corps in this army continued to be exclusively British until World War II. Rothermund also covers the post-Independence era and goes into the imperatives of the social structure of the Indian and the Pakistan armies in the second half of the twentieth century. The last section of the paper deals with the nuclear tests carried out by the two countries in 1998 and the implications of this development for the security of the region.
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THE TIDES OF THE INDIAN OCEAN, ISLAMIZATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF COAST AND INLAND1 Jan Heesterman
1 “We have come to seek Christians and spices.” This proud declaration by the Portuguese emissario sent ashore by Vasco da Gama on reaching Calicut has entered the standard lore of the “Age of Discoveries”. The striking point, however, is that the Portuguese on arrival promptly found interlocutors with whom they could communicate in a Mediterranean lingua franca. That is, they met and conversed as Mediterraneans among each other. In contrast to Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama never left the old and familiar world—a world that had its centre in the Middle East, which in various ways linked the Mediterranean to that other, far larger, mediterranean of the Indian Ocean. The first entry of the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean was no more than adding an alternative channel of communication to the already existing overland route. Along this channel they introduced the violent competition and enmities of the Mediterranean. It is not that the Indian Ocean was an area of peaceful proceedings, cruelly disturbed by ruthless Portuguese violence, not to speak of the later coming Dutch and English. The Indian waters had their well-established fierce competition, conflict and piracy. However, there is a striking difference. While the Mediterranean since the fall of the Roman Empire—actually already before—shows a pattern of progressively splitting up, the Indian Ocean offers a picture of increasing integration. The Mediterranean’s evermore complicated pattern of shifting and criss-crossing dividing lines was not primarily a matter of the clash of the Christian and Islamic worlds.
1 This essay is the revised and annotated text of a lecture delivered at a conference on “Eurasia and Africa during the last Thousand Years”, convened by F.M. Clover, University of Wisconsin, 11–12 October 1999.
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In fact, it must be counted to be typical of the European world, where eventually it gave rise to the configuration of mutually exclusive, modern national states. Similarly, it was through the intensified intervention of the West-European powers since the end of the eighteenth century that this divisive pattern came to impose itself in the Indian Ocean world—as elsewhere—and eventually broke up the secular process of its integration. On the face of it one might be inclined to see the clash between Islam and Hinduism or Buddhism as the source of the break-up, as it dramatically manifested itself in the Indian subcontinent’s partition which accompanied Independence in 1947. However, as in the case of the Mediterranean, the clash with Islam was part of the divisiveness, not its cause. Moreover, how should one explain the sudden upsurge in India of irreparable communal conflict against the background of seven centuries of give-and-take symbiosis? It is unlikely that such an irreparable conflict could have been suppressed for so long. In fact, far from causing disruption, the expansion of Islam went hand in hand with the on-going integration of the Indian Ocean area. But again without being its cause. The tides of integration amply preceded Islam. One might say that, like Buddhism and scriptural Hinduism before, Islam rode the crest of the integrative waves.
2 Speaking of waves and tides here, is no mere, conveniently vague metaphor. The channel of communication was indeed the Indian Ocean with its currents, its trade winds and its coasts. And it was along this channel that Islam expanded. The expansion of Islam, then, can give us interesting insights in the integration process of the Indian Ocean. It is well-known that Islam was in the first place carried all over the Indian Ocean by maritime traffic, stimulated by the economic preponderance of the Middle East and the steadily increasing activity along the sea-lanes, which in turn were linked via the Mediterranean with the growth of the European economy. From the other end of the Indian Ocean economic activity was further intensified since the late tenth century by Chinese involvement leading to Chinese commercial settlements in Southeast Asia and culminating in the great maritime expeditions under the Ming dynasty in the first half of the
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fifteenth century (1405–1431), after which official Chinese involvement came to an end. Chinese merchants remained active, though— especially in Southeast Asia. It was in this context of increasing maritime activity that Islam primarily could expand along the coasts.2 And for a long time Islam remained very much a coastal phenomenon. Armed conquest of the South Asian mainland had to wait till the break-through of Central Asian mounted archers at the beginning of the thirteenth century.3 But their lightning actions had nothing to do with the strong presence of Islam on the coasts, nor did they bring about—forcibly or otherwise—something even distantly approaching mass conversion.
3 Now, it lies near at hand to suppose that once having a foothold on the coast Islam easily expanded into the interior. However, on further consideration it may be doubted, whether the coastal areas offered the conditions for Islam firmly to take root. And in as far as this may have been the case, can we safely assume that Islam automatically penetrated into the interior? In order to become firmly established and expand, Islam, like other scriptural religions, needs durable centres for maintaining, developing, transmitting and propagating its scriptural tenets; that is, it needs stable patronage and generous endowments. Islam, after its rise in the Arabian peninsula, found the resources for such support in the Hellenised cities of the Middle East. It was there that it received its typically urban imprint. But exactly there is the rub. We tend to think of seaports as permanent towns with a stable population and properly looked after harbour facilities and defences. However, in general towns and cities were institutionally of a different nature—a point to which we shall have to come back. Seaports,
2 On the historical role of the coasts cf. J.C. Heesterman, “Littoral et intérieur de l’Inde”, in: L. Blussé, H.L. Wesseling and G. Winius (eds.), History and Underdevelopment: Essays on Underdevelopment and European Expansion in Asia and Africa (Leiden, 1980), pp. 87–92; J.C. Heesterman, “The Hindu Frontier”, Itinerario 13 (1989), pp. 1–16. 3 On the “Opening of the Gates of Hind” by Turkish mounted archers, see A. Wink, Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. II: The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th–13th Centuries (Leiden, 1997), Chs. 3 and 4.
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moreover, differed also for other reasons. Although there was no dearth of big, ocean-going ships, the craft that was mostly in use was relatively small, low-slung and flat-bottomed or with shallow draught, capable of negotiating shallows, estuaries and mudflats. Such craft did not need elaborate facilities and accordingly did not require considerable investments in harbour facilities.4 This was as well, since the seaports were exposed to hostile action and piracy. Harbours were decidedly low-costs affairs. Consequently there was no strong urge to make great efforts to develop and maintain seaports. Each beach, creek, estuary or lagoon could be a harbour, each shore might have an adequate roadstead. Thus an unassuming fishing village on the Coromandel Coast that hardly seemed destined for such a future could within a few decades develop into the dominant port-city of Madras, which was turned into an European type fortified portcity5—a costly type, new to the area, originally introduced by the Portuguese.
4 A typical example is provided by the great port of Melaka, dominating the straits between the Malaccan peninsula and the island of Sumatra. It was the exchange point between the Indonesian Archi-
4 For a brief survey of Asian ships and shipbuilding, see K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 138–159. On the great variety of types according to diverging local and regional needs, see p. 141. For Javanese shipbuilding, see D. Lombard, Le carrefour javanais: Essai d’histoire globale, Vol. II: Les réseaux asiatiques (Paris, 1990), p. 85f. 5 Cf. K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East Asia Company, 1660 –1760 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 51. When Niels Steensgaard speaks of Goa or Batavia (meaning generally the European creation of port-cities in the Indian Ocean area) as “false centres”, dislocating the Indian Ocean network, we should keep in mind the fundamental instability of the traditional harbour towns and the ease of their replacement. Actually, the multicentred Indian Ocean network had a long history of dislocations, “cutting same lines of communication and redirecting same activities” before the European entry into the area. The difference was not that these dislocations were caused by “interests external to the Indian Ocean”—the Indian Ocean never was a closed world—but, so to say, the stabilitas loci of newly created or refurbished port-cities (see N. Steensgaard, “The Indian Ocean Network and the Emerging World-Economy”, in Satish Chandra (ed.), The Indian Ocean (New Delhi, 1987), p. 149). Below we shall find occasion to come back to this point with regard to towns or cities in general.
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pelago and the South China coast on the one hand and South and West Asia on the other. So, when the Portuguese attacked Melaka one would expect that they would have been confronted with a determined resistance. But there was no sign of it. Instead, the sultan simply withdrew to the hinterland at a distance of a day’s journey. The attack was seen as a raid after which the assailants would retire with the loot or the agreed ransom—a not unusual event. The Portuguese, however, did something very unusual. They did not retire but, on the contrary, stayed and built a fortress. A legendary version of the conquest of Melaka—written down 200 years later, around the end of the seventeenth century—singles out the building of the fortress for a fulsome treatment in a curious mixture of half-way realistic and half-mythic-cosmogonic detail, thus stressing the unusual importance of the event. The sultan on the other hand, resignedly goes elsewhere to found new seaports, Bintang and Johore, equally on the straits.6 This well illustrates the relative ease of founding new seaports as well as their disposability. More generally we see here that the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese instead of concentrating maritime and commercial power gave rise to the growth of other seaports (including Aceh and Jambi). This in turn also signals the rising tide of intensification of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean, bringing further integration, as well as sharper competition, to which the Portuguese contributed a tinge of often berserker-like warriordom. Now, for all its fame and importance as a seaport and entrepôt Melaka had no hinterland of its own. But even Surat on the Indian west coast, the main maritime outlet of northern India and as such favoured by the imperial Mughal government, was far from a portcity, even from the contemporary European point of view. Thus Hendrik Zwaardecroon, director of the Dutch East India Company at Surat from 1699 to 1701, noted with dismay that even raging fires did not move the Mughal authorities to any action. Nor did the silting up of the harbour; on top of that ballast was freely dropped there. Such neglect was not just incidental.7 Some seventy years 6 The chronicle’s story is quoted by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500 –1700 (London and New York, 1993), pp. 3–6 (for the building of the fort see p. 4f.; next comes the Dutch conquest of Melaka). Cf. also A. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, Vol. I: The Lands below the Winds (New Haven and London, 1988), p. 123f. 7 See A. Dasgupta “De VOC en Suratte in de 17e en 18e eeuw” in M.A.P. Meilink Roelofsz (ed.), De V.O.C. in Azië (Bussum, 1976), p. 77f.
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before another Company servant, Francisco Pelsaert, had already commented on similar signs of official neglect. The fort protecting the harbour would not be able to stand up to a short bombardment. Moreover, the forces of a nearby raja used to come pillaging up to and into the town. As to Surat’s function as a market for buying textiles—next to indigo the most important export product— Pelsaert pointed out that there was locally no worthwhile production; to obtain the coveted textiles one had to go to the markets and production centres up-country, into the interior. Surat, he observed, owed its importance not to trade and production but to transhipment business.8 Even though this may have been exaggerated, it makes to same extent the lack of care spent on the town understandable. The time of the great coastal metropolis, such as Madras, Calcutta and Bombay combining various functions—market, finance, production, entrepôt and transport as well as government—was still to come in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.9 The fluidity and impermanence of the seaports were reflected in the mobility of their heterogeneous and floating population of merchants and sailors whose movements were ruled by the rhythm of the trade winds. But however heterogeneous they were, through their mobility, mutual contact and the similarity of their living conditions the orang laut or “sea nomads” shared a common culture that markedly differed from the culture of the interior. It still resonates in the work of Joseph Conrad. The coastal culture was characterised by openness and flexibility as well as competition in contrast to the restrictive features of the agrarian inland regimes. Here, in the coastal milieu, Islam readily gained access. However, the same features of fluidity and impermanence through which Islam gained access to the littoral world militated against its full deployment, notably the coastal world did not offer much opportunity for the founding and the growth of durable institutions for maintaining and propagating scriptural tradition. Islam needed, as already mentioned, the permanence of the city and its urban civil-
8 See Pelsaert’s “Remonstrantie” in D.H.A. Kolff and H.W. van Santen (eds.), De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal India, 1627 (The Hague, 1979), pp. 287, 289, 308. 9 On the “Making of the Modern Indian Ocean Forts”, see the contribution of F.J.A. Broeze, K.E. McPherson and P.D. Reeves in Satish Chandra, The Indian Ocean, pp. 254–316.
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isation. And it was exactly this that was lacking on the coasts. Typically an eighteenth-century Arab chronicle remarked on the Muslim Mappilas of the Malabar coast that they were “people of great courage and zeal for Islam” but added that they had “few scholars among them and no more of Islam than the mere name of it”.10 Notwithstanding its wealth, the maritime world was not known for its centres of learning. Moreover, given the contrast between the libertarian coastal milieu and the restrictive regimes of the interior, penetration of Islam into the inland areas was far from self-evident.
5 But how then could Islam gain a firm foothold in the interior? As already pointed out we should in the first place think of the city as the economic and political centre capable of providing generous support to religious institutions. However, the matter is not so clearcut. We encounter here again the problem of impermanence we already noticed on the coasts. Though not to the same extent as the coastal port town, the inland town—even imperial cities—lacked the determination to persevere that characterised even the smallest European town. Basically, what distinguished the European town, was its corporate freedom, harking back to the late Roman coloniae, municipia and civitates with their formal constitutions and autonomy. This particular jural status had far-reaching consequences. It meant that it was profitable to invest in one’s town, in its prosperity, institutions and defence. This again was a powerful incentive not to relinquish one’s town in adversity and to defend it till the bitter end. All this made for the permanence of the European town and gave it its unique character. Its counterpart, however, in the world of the Indies was utterly disposable. Thus the Mughal Empire, precisely at the time of its vigorous expansion, did not have a permanent capital. The name of the imperial centre, urdù"i mu'allà, the “exalted army camp”, is significant. It was indeed a mobile court and army camp and as such it did move about. Only during the long decline of imperial power it became fixed at Delhi. 10 See Stephen F. Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mappilas of Malabar, 1498–1922 (Oxford, 1980), p. 53 (referring to an Arabic chronicle quoted by R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast, p. 117).
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Whatever permanence there was did not depend on durable towns and cities but on the zones of intensive agriculture; in South and Southeast Asia this meant especially the highly productive irrigated rice cultivation. The durability of towns situated in these areas did not arise from their intrinsic strength but from the permanence of sedentary agriculture and its tight web of social relations. Such towns were mostly centres providing services to the surrounding agricultural tracts—such as market facilities, finance and manufactures. They also were an important prop in the expansion of agriculture. In short, they were closely tied up with the agrarian world.11 Although, as we shall discuss further on, agriculture did play an important part in the expansion and consolidation of Islam, the old established agricultural areas were, by themselves, least amenable to islamization. Densely populated and covered by an intricate web of rights to shares in the produce of the soil, as well as no less intricate networks of dependence and interdependence, the agricultural areas offer little if any room for extraneous movements and innovation. Everything is geared to preserve a precarious balance, the more so because it is forever threatened by the vagaries of the monsoon and other natural or man-made misfortunes.12 Also the conqueror—and especially he—cannot do otherwise than to try and further the existing order, lest he endangers his conquest. A dynamic event like islamization, however, requires free space, unencumbered by restrictive arrangements, which not only allows but is characterised by change and mobility. This was the case in the coastal areas, where Islam did indeed find ready access.
11 Cf. A.H. Hourani in A.H. Hourani and S.M. Stern (eds.), The Islamic City (Oxford, 1970), pp. 16–20, where he speaks of the “agro-city” as “the basic unit of Near Eastern society”. His description also fits South Asian cities. It should be noted that the Middle Eastern Islamic cities Hourani has in mind, though originally endowed with Roman constitutions, had already by the fifth century practically lost their autonomy—this in contrast to those in the western part of the Roman world (see A. Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity (London and New York, 1993), p. 168). 12 On the heavy impact of environmental change in the Indian Ocean area through natural causes see A. Wink, “From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean: Medieval History in Geographic Perspective”, Comparative Studies on Society and History, 44 (2002), pp. 416–445. Wink rightly draws attention to the part of the uncontrollably shifting course of the great rivers in the impermanence of cities, turning the Indian Ocean area into one “of environmentally disrupted human settlement, of ‘lost’ civilizations, of ‘lost’ cities” (p. 439).
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6 In this respect the coasts do not stand by themselves. They share their characteristics—openness, mobility, fluidity, a floating and heterogeneous population and facility of long-distance traffic—with particular mainland areas that form frontier zones, as coastal areas also do. As the littoral (and its coastal shipping) forms a frontier zone between the open sea and the agrarian inland, so do the passages stretching between the uncultivated wilds and the densely settled agricultural areas. When we speak here of “frontiers”, we should not think of boundaries in the modern sense of imaginary lines enclosing a particular territory and setting it off from similarly enclosed territories surrounding it. These modern borderlines do not facilitate mobility and communication but, on the contrary, cut through and obstruct the cross-boundary lines of communication. The notion of enclosing and separating boundaries by itself is, of course, not only modern. Typically modern is only its exclusive practice. We know the cruel consequences of this practice. Traditionally there was also a contrasting, more organic, notion that starts from lines of communication and—as opposed to the enclosing and excluding boundary—stresses mobility and complementarity. This notion is exemplified by the pattern formed by a small centre from which start radial lines, or rather paths or roads, running to the tour quarters. This pattern is attested in ancient and classical Indian texts. It corresponds to the Javanese notion of montjopat, that is a quincunx formed by a central settlement and four outlying villages. It is equally present in the premier princely state of Malaysia, Negri Sembilan, the “Nine Negeris”, consisting of a small centre surrounded by two rings of four districts.13 This centre-cum-radials pattern we can recognize also in classical Rome and the great roads that, starting from there, ran through and united the orbis terrarum. The Roman Empire—like other traditional empires—was not primarily defined by territory, as the modern state is, but by its roads. Empire building was road building.
13 J.C. Heesterman, “Two Types of Spatial Boundaries”, in E. Cohen, M. Lissak, and U. Almagor (eds.), Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honor of S.N. Eisenstadt (Boulder and London, 1985), pp. 59–72.
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There was, of course, the famed fortified limes surrounding the Empire. But it is significant that the word limes primarily means “path” or “road”, especially a lateral road crossing another, usually more important one.14 It is mostly viewed as a fortified boundary line separating the Roman from the barbarian world. Apart from its military function it is especially the communicative and economic aspect that stand out. In the frontier zone marked by the limes the two contrasting boundary conceptions—centre-cum-radials as against enclosing boundary line—meet each other. The limes, or rather the traffic artery covered by it, forms the most important lateral connection of the roads that fan out to it and find their continuation in the trade routes beyond the limes. The fortifications on the limes were at the same time checking points for incoming and outgoing trade as well as markets. When we further consider the intensive movement of goods in both directions and the sizeable capital influx for paying the garrisons and for building and supplying the fortifications we cannot but conclude that the frontier zone rather than the fringe of civilisation was an economically privileged and expansive area with an important radiation and full of potential for the future. One might even wonder, in how far the frontier might threaten to become an incontrollable drain weakening the core areas—as indeed appears to have happened eventually to the Roman Empire. It would seem— as I shall argue further on—that the Mughal Empire suffered a comparable fate. Before we return to the Indies and their mainland frontiers there is still one more feature that calls for our attention. The frontier is determined by climate and ecology. This is well-illustrated by the Roman Empire’s Arab-Syrian frontier in the Middle East. The roads that farm its care follow the desert line between 100 and 250 mm. rainfall per year.15
14 Th. Mommsen, Das Weltreich der Caesaren (Vienna and Leipzig, 1933), p. 132. Mommsen speaks of an original Grenzweg. “Der Limes ist also die Reichsgrenzstrasse, bestimmt zur Regulierung des Grenzverkehr dadurch dass ihre Überschreitung nur an gewissen Punkten gestattet, sonst untersagt war”. See further the recent study by C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Baltimore and London, 1994). 15 For the ecological background of the Roman Frontiers, see Whittaker, Frontiers, pp. 86–97. For the eastern frontier: p. 93 and figure 26 on p. 96.
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7 Comparable natural conditions though not as sharply determine the inland frontiers of the Indian subcontinent, as well as their connective function. They are directly related to the basic divide that opposes densely populated agricultural tracts to those areas that do not lend themselves to agrarian sedentarisation, either because of aridity or because they are mountainous or densely forested. The divide recalls the classical contrasting pair of gràma and ara»ya, settled track as against wilderness—a contrast that is the warp and weft of Indian history and culture. It is the stretch of large, open, arid spaces that distinguishes the Indian subcontinent from Southeast Asia. It links up with the arid zones of the Middle East and Central Asia and at the other end reaches down into the southern part of the subcontinent. The transitional zones between the well-watered agrarian areas and the arid nomadic spaces form the “inner frontiers” as well as the corridors for trade and traffic, connecting the agrarian core areas with each other and with West and Central Asia. No less important, they run up—like the great navigable rivers such as Ganges and Indus—to that other frontier, the limes-like littoral, finding their continuation beyond it in the sea-lanes. With the maritime frontier the inner frontiers share the features of mobility and openness and by the same taken they also are zones of often violent conflict between expanding agriculture and aggressive nomadism. It was through these corridors that the mounted archers from Central Asia could penetrate into India and eventually conquer it. In short, they are the zones of maximum tension, “where the action is”. Not surprisingly we often find the important political centres not in the agricultural core areas where we would expect them to be situated, but in the border zones adjoining the arid areas. Thus Delhi and Agra lie right in the transitional corridor between the fertile Ganges basin and the arid zone, leading via the Deccan plateau to southern India. In a similar way it was the maritime frontier that provided British India during a century and a half with its eccentrically situated capital Calcutta.
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8
India’s Mughal rulers, alert to the comprehensive contrast between the two eco zones, made it the basis of their administration. They clearly distinguished between areas that were ra"ìyatì that is settled agrarian areas regularly rendering land revenue, as against nonregulation areas disparagingly known as mawàs, wilderness, with its rebellious denizens, summarily called mawàsì if not worse.16 In fact the mawàs areas were in the majority. At least, the already mentioned Dutch Company servant, Pelsaert, scathingly remarks that the Mughal emperor Jahangir, whose name means “Grasping the whole world”, “is to be regarded as king of the plains and open roads only, for in many places you can travel only with a strong body of men or on payment of heavy tolls to rebels”.17 But however bad it may have been, it did not stop the increasing volume of trade and traffic passing through the mawàs. What it comes down to, is that the Mughal Empire rested on two opposite sets of conditions, those of sedentary agriculture and those of nomadic mobility. Consequently its policy had to be doublepronged. On the one hand agrarian expansion was furthered by stimulating the foundation of market towns and on the other hand the control of main routes—Pelsaert’s “open roads”—through the arid zones. Thus Aurangzeb felt compelled to conquer the Deccan in order to win command of the through route to the Coromandel Coast in the southeast, even though this caused a fatal drain on the Empire’s resources. Here again the Empire was built not on territory but on roads.
9 But now, what can this disquisition on frontier zones tell us about islamization and, more generally, about the integration of the Indian
16 J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society (Chicago, 1995), p. 169f. On the historical significance of the interaction of arid and monsoon India see J. Gommans, “The Silent Frontier of South Asia”, Journal of World History, 9 (1998), pp. 1–25, and his Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London and New York, 2002), pp. 7–37. 17 See Kolff and Van Santen, Geschriften, p. 307.
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Ocean world? We already concluded that the openness of both the maritime and the inland frontier zones favoured the deployment of Islam. However, the mobility and impermanence of these zones militated against the establishment of stable, well-endowed institutions of scriptural learning. Nor were the successive Muslim regimes particularly concerned with the spread of Islam. How then are we to account for its becoming nevertheless rooted in India, even though only as a minority religion? In a sense Islam, barred from the agrarian zones and their permanence, had to create its own permanent space; that is, it did not only gain access to the mobile coastal areas and the inland traffic corridors but also founded its own zones of permanent settlement. The agents bringing this about were in the first place Sufi “holy men” and their followers. How this worked is strikingly illustrated by the case of a fourteenth-century Sufi leader, Shah Jalal, whose hagiography is extensively quoted by Richard Eaton in his study of the rise of Islam in the Bengal frontier.18 According to this source, Shah Jalal, after having received his Sufi formation in Central Asia, decided to complement the conquest of the spiritual world with that of the material world and so started out as a warrior of the faith with a number of followers. After extensive peregrinations he finally reached the forested area of Sylhet in eastern Bengal. Now the interesting point is, how this progress is described. We are told that he and his followers had no permanent means of subsistence, but nevertheless managed to live in splendour—presumably from the proceeds of their worldly conquests. So we are told that each time they conquered a valley or won cattle, they propagated Islam. When they finally reached the forest area of Sylhet the whole country fell into their hands. The shaikh then shared out the area to his followers,
18 R.M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1993), pp. 71–77. Even if this tale is taken to be no more than a hagiographic construction and the underlying reality reduced to a peacable transition from a pastoral nomadic to a sedentary agrarian life, as Eaton suggests, the pattern of the Sufi warrior striving for both inner and external conquest is no less significant. In fact it is widespread and well-known. Similarly we know the Hindu warrior ascetic, cf. Monica Horstmann “Warrior Ascetics in Eighteenthcentury Rajasthan”, in M.A. Gautam and G.K. Schokker (eds.), Bhakti in Current Research 1982–85 (Lucknow: Kern Institute Miscellanea 10, n.y.), pp. 43–55, and her “On the Dual Identity of Nagas”, in D.L. Eck and F. Mallison (eds.), Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions for the regions of India. Studies in Honour of Charlotte Vaudeville (Groningen, 1991), pp. 255–71.
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allowed them to marry and to settle down. This Werdegang evokes the career of an itinerant band of consecrated warriors-cum-cattle rustlers under a charismatic leader, who finally has them settle down to become pioneer farmers. Eaton, charitably explaining away the warrior phase, observes that Islam reveals itself here as a religion of the plough, not of the sword—but not of the pen either.
10 The change from itinerant warrior to settled farmer was anyway a well-known pattern with an ancient pedigree that has left its traces as far back as the Vedic ritual texts.19 In this way, then, Islam managed to create its own settled space in the open frontier where there was land suitable to be turned into arable. Indonesia too offers examples of Islam creating its own space by means of forest clearance.20 It will be clear, though, that here again scriptural religion and learning did not have much of a chance to flourish. The conditions of agrarian development require an other type of people, namely peasants. Here, as elsewhere, the frontier develops her own, particular culture, alien to scriptural universalistic orthodoxy and based on the devotion to “holy men” and their tradition.21 It were indeed such “holy men”, itinerant Sufi preachers—not the rulers or the men of scriptural learning, the 'ulamà—who carried Islam forward. Instead of 'ulamà the Indian world had its sufi shaikhs; or rather, in the Indian world the Sufi shaikh came to fulfil the function of the 'àlim. The great time of the 'ulamà and scriptural orthodoxy was still to come in the eighteenth century and even more in the nineteenth century under the divisive impact of colonial rule and reformism, stressing communal identity. As it was, however, Islam remained very much a matter of intensely local interest; the cult of
19 J.C. Heesterman, “Warrior, Peasant and Brahmin”, Modern Asian Studies, 29 (1995), pp. 637–54. 20 Cf. Lombard, carrefour, II, p. 111, explaining that Islam acted as the “moteur principal du défrichement”. It was the “conquête de la rizière sur la forêt” (Vol. III: L’héritage des royaumes concentriques (Paris, 1990), p. 9). 21 On the particular culture of the frontier marches, alien to the official centres of power and orthodoxy cf. P. Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1938), pp. 16–32.
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holy men and their tombs, as well as the mystic orientation of Sufism easily tied in with Hindu beliefs and practices and consequently exercised a strong local appeal. On the other hand Sufism did have the rudiments of a pan-Islamic organisation—in fact the only one available—in the farm of its various orders or brotherhoods and the chain of their hospices or khànqàhs stretching along the trade routes. So, Sufism was practically predestined to be the vehicle of the propagation of Islam, penetrating into the agrarian interior and pushing forward the agricultural frontier. As the case of Shah Jalal illustrates, Sufi preachers did so both as warriors of the faith and as peasant pioneers conquering the wilderness. It also reveals the underlying pattern of the integration of the Indian world. At the root of this pattern was the complementarity of the mobile and the sedentary worlds. Both needed the other’s resources. But complementarity—to be effective—required that their forces be balanced, so that the one could not dominate over the other and ruin the flexibility of their interaction. The dense web of agrarian relations and their restrictive regulation could not be imposed on the libertarian régime of the mobile zones without fatally impairing trade and traffic, nor could the libertarian lack of regulation, governing the mobile zone be introduced in the sedentary zone without working havoc. The basic principle, exemplified by the Mughal Empire—in fact largely preceding Muslim rule—was the flexible maintenance of the precarious balance between the two contrasting zones.
11 Yet, in the end, that is since the middle of the eighteenth century, the balance was fatally disturbed, causing the final collapse of the Mughal Empire. The cause was the accumulation of resources in the coastal frontier zone, which no doubt stimulated the economy of the interior but even more exercised a magnetic attraction on the interior’s commercial and manufacturing resources. In the end India was, as it were, turned inside out. Conversely, the accumulated resources on the coast, seeking an outlet, overwhelmed the interior. A sign of this development was the rapid commercialisation of local or regional political power.
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What this meant was already shown early on, in the 30’s of the seventeenth century, albeit still in a fairly harmless form, when the Dutch East India Company, with its comparatively huge and concentrated financial resources, entered the indigo producing district of Bayana, near the imperial centre Agra, and thereby threatened to undermine the delicate web of agrarian relations which involved socio-political power as well—and near the imperial centre at that. At that time it was still possible to restore the balance by the simple means of declaring a local government monopoly of indigo. Whether the monopoly did produce any great profits is not known, nor did it last. But it did stop the Company’s operations in the Bayana area.22 This example illustrates, why the inland regimes were inclined to restrain trade and traffic so as not to disturb agrarian relations. Moreover, though clearly in need of the commercial, financial as well as military resources of the mobile coastal and arid zones, they had good reasons to be suspicious of the powerful merchants and financiers, especially those of the coasts who escaped their control. Thus we see in the seventeenth century, at the time of strongly increasing maritime trade, the Burmese rulers turn their back to the sea, moving their capital from Pegu on the Irrawaddy delta to inland Ava and concentrating on the rice cultivating middle Irrawaddy valley. In the same period the North Javanese coast was overrun and subdued by the inland ruler of Mataram, in fact leaving control of the maritime connections to the VOC. Although the Indian Mughal rulers incidentally also turned against the maritime powers on the coast—a particular point of irritation being the fortifications of the European settlements—there was no consistent forceful reaction against the increasing power of the coastal centres. The interdependence of the coastal zone and the broad traffic corridors of the interior’s arid zones had grown too intense to be dissolved. This is, however, different in Southeast Asia, where there were no such arid zones that invite traffic. Instead the agrarian inner frontier is marked by mountainous or densely forested areas enclosing broad cultivable planes or valleys. Here, apart from rivers in so far as navigable, the dominant traffic corridors were the sea-
22
H.W. van Santen, De Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Gujarat en Hindustan, 1620 –1660 (PhD thesis Leiden, 1982), pp. 151–169, esp. pp. 162–4, 169.
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lanes, especially those of the Malay world between the Indian Ocean and the Far East. Yet both the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia underwent a common uninterrupted secular process of integration, its main avenue being the coastal frontier zones and the sea-lanes. Understandably the Indian subcontinent took a leading role in this process through its long coastline jutting out into the Indian Ocean and its mainland traffic corridors. This had made the Indianisation of both the subcontinent and, simultaneously, the wider Indian Ocean region possible; later Islam was to a great extent mediated by India.
12 But if it was primarily thanks to its maritime interconnections that the Indian Ocean world could for centuries develop into an ever more integrated oikoumene, how then did these same connections bring about the break-up of this oikoumene? It was not just overwhelming military superiority, the celebrated “guns and sails”, nor the economic force of the western maritime powers on the coasts that definitively broke up the perennial integration round the Indian Ocean. Such disturbances—even if temporarily catastrophic—habitually evened out. What made the decisive difference was the divisiveness that characterised the western world. It arose from an entirely different conception of society and polity. This view stressed the sharply bounded unit as a separate world complete in itself, exemplified by the territorial nation state as it had slowly developed in western Europe in an age-long process that reached its maturity in the eighteenth century, that is at the same time that the western maritime powers broke out of their coastal containment. The modern concept of the state entailed the view that frontiers were no longer zones of inclusion but lines of exclusion. This view resulted from rigid universalistic norms that resist flexible accommodation. They go beyond the shifting particularistic ties of alliance and conflict that govern traditional society. They strip the individual subject of these ties. Set free from organic ties as well as deprived of the protection they may give, the individual is ready to be a member of an impersonal, mechanistically construed grouping, say a nation or a scriptural orthodoxy. Although universalistic norms were certainly not lacking, they were been to be transcendent and
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not meant to be directly applied. Thus the brahmanic dharma, as Louis Dumont bas observed, “reigns from on high without having to govern here below, which would be fatal to it’.23 The caste rules of mutually exclusive var»as give way in actual practice to inclusive jàtis. Nevertheless caste rules have been understood to refer to a single, monolithic system of mutually exclusive castes and were so used in the British Indian census. Equally rigidly religious adherence came to be defined, forcing nominal Muslims to conform to scriptural norms of orthodoxy. It was this that brought the orthodox 'ulamà to the fore. Obeying the principles of the modern state the government viewed itself—in contradistinction to the traditional dispensation—as standing at a distance from society as well as transcending it. It, therefore, needed to sort out society according to an unequivocal categorical grid that should mediate between itself and society. Much of the popular picture of tradition-bound inflexibility and stagnation derives from such official grid construction. This would not have been a matter of great consequence, if the society involved had not been obliged to conform in its dealings with the state to the grid frame devised by the state. Such conformity was the more easily achieved for the obvious advantages it offered in obtaining a hearing with the authorities and, hopefully, their favour; partly also because one could not but acknowledge the transcendent scriptural norms on which the classificatory grid was built. However, what made the decisive difference was that these norms were brought down from their safe haven on high to govern the world here below through the agency of the modern state, that viewed itself as the holder of transcendent authority, naturally even more so when it had become a national state. But this meant that polarising rigidity cancelled the bipolar flexibility of the traditional dispensation that had supported the process of integration. Its loss brought about a new dispensation characterised by absolute boundaries and schismatic conflict on the one hand, and enforced unity on the other. The integrative tides of the Indian Ocean have been definitively broken by the worldwide violent ripcurrents of divisiveness.
23
L. Dumont, Homo hierarchicus: Le système des castes et ses implications (Paris, 1966), p. 107.
SHAH JAHAN WORE GLASSES: SOME REMARKS ON THE IMPACT OF THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY ON NORTHERN INDIA AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH Hans van Santen
When the Dutch East India Company presented a Japanese palanquin to the Great Mughal Shah Jahan in Lahore in 1646, the king looked at it from all sides through his glasses. He was astounded by its ingeniousness and exclaimed “wa, wa shabas, firingi” (well done, Europeans!). He asked the nobleman Haqiqat Khan where the palanquin had been manufactured and how much it had cost. Haqiqat Khan, who knew Shah Jahan’s stinginess, nervously gave the Dutch Company servant a sign to answer his Majesty’s question. When the East India Company servant replied that it was made in Japan and that it had cost 8000 rupees, Shah Jahan remarked that this seemed hardly possible, and was way too expensive, as the palanquin was decorated with neither gold nor jewels.1
For anyone interested to learn what the result has been of over 200 years of VOC presence in India there are several options. By far the most enjoyable thing to do would be to take sabbatical leave for about six months and leisurely visit the remaining Dutch factories, forts and cemeteries scattered along the Indian coast and inland.2 There are dozens of fine places in Kerala, Tamilnadu, Orissa, Bengal and Gujarat and although most of them are rather neglected, they still make an impressive sight. During my four years stay in India in the 1990’s, I visited numerous buildings and cemeteries in Surat, Ahmedabad, Chinsura, and Cochin. After an often extensive search for the VOC’s presence it is a curious experience to see engravings in Dutch on the tombs of deceased VOC servants and their family at the graveyard in Ahmadabad, or to find the Dutch drainage system in Chinsura still in use.
1
National Archives The Hague (NA), VOC 1161, f. 1028r. L.B. Wevers en F.F. Ambagtsheer made a very useful inventory of the Dutch monuments in India (L.B. Wevers and F.F. Ambagtsheer, “Dutch monuments in India” (5 vols., unpubl., 1997). Ambagtsheer is working on a new study. 2
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Going to the National Archives in The Hague would be an easier, but admittedly less enjoyable way to learn about the Dutch in India. Quite a substantial part of the 1.4 kilometres of VOC archives is devoted to India. The archives are indeed so massive that a large part has not or hardly been studied—notwithstanding the substantive research over the last decades by historians such as Om Prakash on Bengal, Arasaratnam and Subrahmanyam on the Coromandel Coast, s’Jacob on Malabar, and Dasgupta and myself on Gujarat. But why would anyone primarily interested in Indian history (and not in VOC history) focus on the VOC archives at all? Ever since the “classics” of W.H. Moreland on Mughal India, the first historian to make good use of Dutch archives on India, almost a century ago now, the same questions remain. Was the presence of the Dutch in northern India only a ripple in the ocean of a predominantly agrarian society—or at best of marginal importance to its total trade and industrial production? Is the fact that the western firingì are hardly ever mentioned in seventeenth-century Indian chronicles and annals not proof of the total lack of impact of these western traders? Or, conversely, did the VOC make a difference in India by its export of millions of calicoes, many tons of indigo, opium and saltpetre and by being the importer of quite substantial amounts of precious metals and copper? And to what extent were the Dutch able to translate their undeniable maritime dominance into influence on land? This article will certainly not give definite answers. But I do suggest that it is high time we should take a fresh look at some of the standard stereotypes in Indian historiography; such as the widelyheld view that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was easily domesticated in the existing order, or the view of western traders being totally separate from and indeed irrelevant for the Mughal polity. The purpose of the article is twofold: first to indicate some areas in which the VOC may have had an impact on northern India (Kerala, where the VOC had territory, is obviously different, and is not considered here). And secondly, to enumerate a number of possible topics for further research.3 I will limit this article to the seventeenth century only.
3
A disclaimer would seem appropriate here, as I try to keep up with Indian historiography as an interested amateur, no longer as a full-time professional.
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The areas of possible Dutch impact include: the repercussions of the use of maritime violence by the VOC, the Dutch impact on the economy of Mughal India with special emphasis on monetary influences, the effect on the rise of indigenous Indian merchants, and lastly, the influence on the Mughal polity. As an example of the interplay between economics and politics, and between foreign and indigenous merchants, I conclude by presenting a case study on the episode of the imprisonment of the most important entrepreneur in Mughal India, Virji Vohra in Surat. The case caused uproar in the merchant community of Surat in the 1630s and gives a fascinating insight in the interaction between the Mughal bureaucracy, the leading Gujarati entrepreneur, and the VOC.
Use of violence by the VOC Soon after having started its trading operations in northern India in the first decade of the seventeenth century the VOC formulated a number of strategic goals relating to Mughal India. First and foremost was the aim to optimise its trading position vis-à-vis the Mughal bureaucracy. In concrete terms this meant paying less toll than its competitors and in general being treated in conformity with its position of “master at sea”, resulting from its undisputed maritime dominance in most of the Asian waters. On the high seas, Dutch and English ships were vastly superior to Indian ships in terms of strength, manoeuvrability and, above all, firepower. Very much related to this first strategic aim the Dutch tried to keep away Asian traders from those markets and products they were trying to monopolise, such as the trade in calicoes to the Moluccas and the import of spices in India from the Moluccas. Lastly, an important aim was to harm the interests of competing western traders, in particularly the Portuguese Estado da Índia. These strategic goals were—at least to some extent— reached by about 1650 through various manifestations of naval force, and a new equilibrium was achieved which would last for about a century. Relations between the VOC and Mughal India started on a violent note. To demonstrate their capability to disrupt all international trade to and from Surat the Dutch captured several Indian ships in 1620. The VOC policy of piracy against Indian ships did make clear that the VOC was able to stop all international maritime trade to
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and from Surat—a lesson that was well understood by Indian officials and merchants alike. The limitations of a policy of aggression to express its maritime dominance, however, also became obvious. Growing investments in India’s hinterland acted as a guarantee and security against a policy dominated by belligerent maritime behaviour. Afflicted Indian merchants were perfectly capable of mobilising court factions—in fact, it is quite remarkable how quickly and easily Indian merchants were able to express their grievances at the Mughal court in Agra and Delhi. After several Dutchmen had been imprisoned and the Company’s goods confiscated, the VOC was forced to repay the damage. Obviously, the combination of trader and pirate had its drawbacks. The second aim—keeping away the Indian, mostly Gujarati, merchants from reserved markets and destinations, especially the Moluccas—was reached through tight control over the Moluccas and through a policy of regulating international Indian shipping. Very conveniently, the Dutch built upon the Portuguese pass (cartaz) system. By providing maritime passes for some destinations and withholding them for others the VOC tried to regulate Gujarati shipping. It worked for the Moluccas and some other parts of he Archipelago, but the policy of squeezing Asian traders into a Dutch dominated trading system was never completely successful. Full control of all Asian straits and shipping lanes went far beyond Dutch maritime capabilities. Apart from piracy and the pass system, a third means to translate maritime dominance was through maritime blockade. The first blockade against a Mughal port occurred in 1648 when the Company tried to gain a better hold of the thriving tin trade between the Malay peninsula and India. Hoping to stop, or at least substantially diminish tin trade by Indian merchants the VOC banned all Indian shipping between Aceh and Surat. Maritime passes were sold in Surat only for “acceptable” Asian ports—a policy frowned upon by Mughal officials, as it remarkably resembled a foreign power taxing Indian merchants in India. The officials in Surat reacted by forbidding the loading of VOC-ships in Surat and the whole affair escalated after the Dutch factory in Surat was plundered by a remarkably well-organised group of thugs, acting no doubt with official consent if not support. The Dutch agent in Agra, while trying to recover the losses, was treated with contempt, with a Mughal nobleman shouting angrily that the Dutch behaviour was an outrage: “leave
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the country, that’s all I have to say to you”! But the Company had decided to continue what it had started, and blocked the port of Surat in 1648. Two returning Indian ships with a cargo of over a million rupees were captured. This naval blockade and the seizure of Indian ships were meant to be a short, tactical action to enforce concessions; it was never meant to jeopardise its position as trader. Neither side was interested in further escalation, and after negotiations, the Indian cargoes were returned to its rightful owners and the Dutch resumed their trading activities. It is hard to say who was the winner in this conflict. The agreement reached with the officials, stipulating that Indian traders would stop their trade in tin, was null and void. A few years later the trade between Surat and Aceh thrived as never before. The same method of naval blockade was tried against the Portuguese—with more success. For several years around 1640 a Dutch fleet cut off all international shipping from Goa. A few times the Dutch (and English) fought and won naval battles against the Portuguese, which greatly impressed the Mughals. With the Portuguese power largely broken, local Company servants were instructed to advise their masters in Batavia on the desirability of conquering Portuguese coastal strongholds along the Indian west coast, such as Diu, or Daman. Their advice was negative: for a trading company having extensive interests in the hinterland, a power base on the coast would yield insufficient profits, commercially or strategically. From these rather tumultuous conflicts in the first decades of the seventeenth century the VOC drew several lessons. An important one was the conviction that it was not so easy to translate maritime dominance into an optimal trading position on land. Its substantial investments in India were a guarantee against a continuous and full use of its maritime dominance. Afflicted Indian merchants made good use of their networks to express their grievances in court. Nevertheless, as “masters at sea” the Dutch were able to deploy a substantial force and showed they were able to completely disrupt Indian foreign trade—and the Mughals knew this. They accepted that their authority was confined to land. As a Company servant once wrote: “the Mughals know that our ships with all their guns cannot enter their country, and they leave the high seas to us”. The awareness that the VOC differed from “normal foreign merchants” had its consequences for the way the Company was dealt with. In correspondence with Batavia and the Republic, VOC servants sometimes
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frankly admitted that the VOC and Indian merchants were treated differently. In their behaviour towards the Dutch the Mughals acted “very reasonably, to the amazement of their own nation”. The Mughals may have regarded the western traders simply as nomads, patrolling the seas, as the Mughal historian Khafi Khan reports.4 But at the same time they were quite aware of the need to provide a preferential treatment to these powerful maritime entrepreneurs, who rather confusingly combined the role of traders on land, and soldiers at sea.
Impact on the economy and on monetary developments It is well documented that the Dutch were rather successful in redirecting at least a part of Indian trade, using force directly or indirectly. Its control over the Spice Islands ended the trade in spices by Indian merchants almost entirely. The trade volume was quite impressive; between 1640 and 1700 the VOC sold about 20 tons of cloves in Surat for around 13 million guilders (about 11 million rupees). In fact, the trade in spices was so profitable that the Company was able to export rupees from Surat to Bengal and other areas regularly. Thanks to the huge imports of spices (and copper) Surat is an interesting exception for the “bullion for goods” character of European trade vis-à-vis India. Undoubtedly, although rather hard to quantify, the gain of the VOC came as a loss for Indian foreign trade. On the other hand, we witness an almost revolutionary rise in demand for Indian calicoes towards the end of the seventeenth century. Strictly macro-economically, until the mid-eighteenth century, the advantages of the trading activities of the westerners would seem to outweigh the disadvantages, as Om Prakash has demonstrated.5 That being said, our knowledge of developments in overall Indian trading patterns is still rather sketchy. The Dutch had access to local customs lists and the archives contain numerous lists of local shipping, its destination, and its cargo. In fact, for Surat and Bengal
4 Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare, Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London, 2002), p. 164. 5 Om Prakash, The New Cambridge History of India, II,5: European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-colonial India (Cambridge, 1998), passim.
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alone there are over 200 lists on Indian shipping in the VOC archives, covering the seventeenth and the eighteenth century. If studied systematically, it would seem possible to obtain a clearer picture of long-term developments of Indian trade throughout the period. These data could then be compared with the (much better documented) data on western shipping and cargoes and may provide a better picture of overall developments. Apart from the question of any impact of Dutch traders replacing Indian traders in some parts of Asia, there is the question of impact on the economy within India. In a remarkable attempt to quantify the impact of the Europeans, Om Prakash calculated that between 1678 and 1718 in Bengal around 33,000 to 44,000 artisans were producing directly for the VOC. For other areas in India, however, these detailed calculations seem hardly feasible, due to insufficient data. In Gujarat for instance the Company was a major buyer of cotton goods: probably even the largest individual buyer. But total demand by Indian merchants exporting to the Middle East was much larger. For the famous cash crop indigo Bayana, grown near Agra, the same applies: for many years in the seventeen century the VOC was the major buyer, but total demand by other merchants was much higher. While it may be impossible to quantify Dutch impact on the economy, it would seem more fruitful to compare in a qualitative manner the extensive data we have on Gujarat, Bengal, and Tamilnadu, and look at both the similarities and differences in market conditions of artisans, especially weaving communities. My own work has indicated that there were huge differences in market conditions between Gujarat and Awadh in the interior. Gujarati weavers, mostly urban, were rather well organised and Gujarat was clearly a “sellers market”. After the famine in 1630–1631 the VOC had to look for new areas of supply, and even went as far as Awadh, east of Agra. There they were able to compare market conditions and what struck them most was the contrast between Gujarat, urban, well organised, oriented towards the world economy versus Awadh, rural based, and for the most part producing for the local market. Weavers and local powerful people in Awadh were much more willing to accept the conditions of international traders such as the VOC than in Gujarat. While in Gujarat the use of force against indebted weavers seemed unthinkable in the seventeenth century, the VOC used force against indebted weavers in Awadh quite regularly. And while in Gujarat
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any merchants ordering calicoes had to make advance payments to weavers, the VOC was able to abolish this system of advance payments in Awadh after some time. Paradoxically, the VOC had a much stronger position vis-à-vis the weaving communities in Awadh, the heartland of Mughal power, than in Gujarat situated at its periphery. The Dutch experiment, however, to explore these far away new markets in Awadh did not last. The logistical problems to transport the calicoes from Awadh to Surat were enormous. It took the caravans over two months to reach Surat. After the effects of the famine in Gujarat had faded, the VOC phased out its activities in Awadh with a sigh of relief. Although important work has been done by Prakash, Arasaratnam and Subrahmanyam, a comparison of the way in which weavers were organised in the different production areas, such as Gujarat, Bengal, and the Coromandel Coast could, I feel, be explored further. This should certainly include the role of different and complex advance payments systems (and the way these systems could develop, as in the case of Awadh), and the role of local powerful groups. I would expect more diversity than uniformity between conditions in Gujarat, Bengal and the Coromandel Coast. Another area of possible western impact is the so-called “price revolution” as a result of the influx of large amounts of silver in Mughal India by the European Companies. The debate on the price revolution in India seems to have ended for some time now. Fortunately, I would say, because it was largely a waste of time. There are simply too many unknown factors. We do not have a clue what the actual size of Indian economy was during Mughal times, to what extent it was growing, and we do not know how much money was circulated. On top of that there are far too few reliable data on prices. Given this lack of reliable data answering macro-economic questions such as the overall rate of inflation or the impact of the influx of silver and gold by western traders on the economy will be rather difficult to answer, to say the least. The sort of detailed economic analysis possible for England, France, or the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century (based on very extensive price series) will probably never be feasible for Mughal India—it is better we accept that. Having said that, however, I do not suggest that Mughal monetary matters should not be studied at all. I would suggest we would concentrate not on silver and gold, but on copper. Whereas the Company was only one of many silver importers, it was undoubt-
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edly the largest importer of copper during the seventeenth century. For example, between 1654 and 1684 the VOC in Surat imported about 7.5 million kilograms of copper from Japan, at a value of over seven million rupees. Imports in Bengal were even larger. Part of this was used for household utensils, but if we would presume that all of the imported copper was minted into copper coins, or paisas, this would amount to a huge sum of over half a billion paisas.6 Obviously, the mineral was crucial to the Mughal economy. During the official court visit in 1662 Aurangzeb even requested the Company to import as much copper as possible. The Company servants wrote extensively about market conditions, and its use. So what we need is a study on the import and use of copper in India, building upon the pioneering work of Frank Perlin.7 On financial techniques in India a lot of work has already been done. Although Dutch and English merchants were critical of almost everything else in India, complaints about current financial techniques were not among them. Minting was slow but well organised and the purity of silver rupees and gold muhrs was exemplary. In fact, the monetary system in Mughal India was much more uniform than in most European countries. Transferring money from one commercial centre to another through bills of exchange, or hu»∂ìs, was also well organised, right from the start of the trading activities of the VOC. At least for the seventeenth century I have not come across any transfer of western financial techniques to Indian financiers. The Company was extremely satisfied with the way the Indian financial system worked. In fact, the financial market was so well developed that for many years the Company financed its activities in Gujarat largely through loans from Indian bankers.
Political influence Going through official Mughal chronicles one is struck by the virtually complete absence of westerners. Contacts with westerners obviously did not fit into the Mughal warrior idiom as expressed in the 6 H.W. van Santen, De VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan, 1620–1660 (Meppel, 1982), p. 108. 7 Frank Perlin, The Invisible City: Monetary, Administrative and Popular Infrastructures in Asia and Europa, 1500–1900 (Aldershot, 1993).
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official annals. But this does not mean that contacts were absent. Geleynssen de Jongh, the VOC agent in Agra in the 1630’s, remarked that he would visit the court almost daily to visit noblemen. He mentioned casually that on average he visited Asaf Khan, the most influential courtier of his times and brother-in-law to Shah Jahan, once a week to do him honour. Whenever a specific issue would come up he would double the number of visits. The Mughal noblemen seemed to be very interested in European affairs. During a court visit in 1642 Shah Jahan inquired after the political situation in Europe, and asked whether the Republic and Portugal had concluded peace, and which of the two countries was larger—as to the last question, the Dutchman certainly did not give the correct answer! In fact, I feel the political role of the VOC has been rather neglected thus far. A sort of political anthropology of Dutch contacts with the court, based upon the published court visits by Van Adrichem and Ketelaar, as well as upon many unpublished ones, is called for. Not only politically, but also financially there were contacts. To transfer capital to the cotton areas in Awadh, the Company paid the sum in Agra to the daughter of Shah Jahan, who had her jàgìr in Awadh. Afterwards, the local manager of the princess supplied the sum in Awadh. It is but one of the many examples of the integrated financial system in Mughal India, in which merchants/financiers as well as officials participated. The Dutch and English Companies had access to capital deposited by courtiers with Indian financiers. Sometimes the VOC even borrowed directly from the royal treasury (¶azàna). In 1638, the local governor in Surat provided a 400,000ma˙mùdìs loan from the ¶azàna to the Company in Surat. However, the Governor-General in Batavia and the Gentlemen XVII were adamantly against borrowing from officials, and were concerned that complicated credit relationships would get the VOC stuck in a morass of uncontrollable mutual obligations. The local director defended the decision to borrow by arguing that through this loan the Mughal governor would feel responsible for the VOC. But to no avail, in contrast to the EIC the VOC remained extremely reluctant to gain a foothold in the Mughal political domain through credit relationships. By its own choice, the VOC was extremely reluctant to become a political entrepreneur in Mughal India.
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Virji Vohra The story of the imprisonment of Virji Vohra may identify some elements of the complex relationships between Mughal officials, Indian merchants, and the western Companies. Two main characters were players in the game: Virji Vohra, the “famous Banyan merchant”, and Hakim Masih al-Zaman, the local governor in Surat. In addition to these two participants, high noblemen at court, the VOC, and last but not least, competing Indian merchants played the key roles. The stage was Surat, Agra and Lahore, and the timing 1638 until 1641. Thanks to the fact that the VOC was closely involved, the episode is rather well documented. No doubt Virji Vohra was one of the most successful and richest merchants of the seventeenth century. The first reference to him dates back as early as the second decade of the seventeenth century, while the last references date from the 1670’s. Based in Surat, his area of operations extended towards the Middle East and the Indonesian Archipelago. He had his agents all over Asia and owned his own fleet of ships. He led a consortium of Surat-based merchants purchasing for many years the total cargo of the VOC ships. Apart from his trading activities Virji Vohra was the leading financier in Surat. His opponent in the conflict was the mutaßaddì, the “Governor”, of Surat, Masih al-Zaman, titled ˙akìm, or doctor. He was about sixty years of age, “very grey, looking stately and honest, who served the father of the king and the king himself for many years as a doctor”.8 In the first months of 1638 this ˙akìm put Virji Vohra in jail in Surat. Was this an example of a Mughal functionary extorting money from a very wealthy merchant; was he “ripe for extortion” as W.H. Moreland concluded already in 1923? And was this not related to the fact that the ˙akìm had rented his office for a substantial sum, was not able to pay the sum, and was looking for alternative sources of income? Undoubtedly this played a role, but there was more at stake. The origin of the conflict dates from 1637, as the VOC, as usual in those years, sold all its cargo to a consortium of Indian merchants, headed by Virji Vohra.9 Year after year the same consortium offered
8 NA, VOC 1116, “B. Pietersen to Gentlemen XVII, Surat, 10 January 1636”, f. 88r. 9 The advantage was that in this way the VOC itself did not have to arrange
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the highest price for the Company’s goods. A sceptical GovernorGeneral in Batavia suspected a private set-up between local Company servants and this group—which was hard to prove, but very likely. In Surat the special bond between Virji Vohra and the Company was a source of great envy, because other entrepreneurs, merchants as well as Mughal officials, were eager to get a piece of the pie. In 1637, two officials, Mirza Mahmud and Amin Beg, respectively shahbandar (“harbour master”) and “commissioner” of Surat, were interested in buying all spices, and approached the VOC Director for this. What they did not know was that they were too late; the Company had already secretly sold them to the consortium of Virji Vohra. In order not to offend the officials the VOC stated a selling price, but much higher than the actual one the consortium paid. This turned out to be not such a smart move. The officials got wind of the deal and were so outraged that they “fulminated” against the merchants of the consortium.10 Out of spite the transport of goods from the VOC ships to the warehouses of the consortium was forbidden. The Dutch Director immediately threatened not to unload the ships until the VOC had been officially assured that it could sell to whomever it wanted. This worked and for the time being the dispute seemed to have been solved. What remained, however, was the hatred against Virji Vohra, who had a virtual monopoly in Mughal India on imported goods of the VOC, and made good profit through this. When, in early 1638 Virji Vohra was imprisoned in the mutaßaddì’s house, the VOC Director in Surat gave two reasons: the envy towards Virji Vohra and the fact that the VOC had scored points off the Mughal officials.11 It was claimed that the imprisonment took place at the instigation of merchants from Surat, who seriously envied Virji Vohra, because he had a virtual monopoly in Mughal India on imported VOC goods. In Surat, the merchants had no other means
the difficult distribution of goods in northern India. A second advantage was that by posing as a wholesaler and not as a retailer, the VOC created the possibility to sell the cargo all at once, and was able to reap the profits immediately. 10 NA, VOC 1127, “B. Pietersen to A. van Diemen, Surat, 18 April 1638”, f. 123. 11 NA, VOC 1127, “B. Pietersen to A. van Diemen, Surat, 18 April 1638”, f. 123v.
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“to avenge them” than to discredit him with the ˙akìm.12 Obviously, envy could not constitute the official reason for imprisonment. It ran as follows: the merchant had purchased all food supplies during the famine of 1630–1631 and sold them for exorbitant prices (this could be true, but while we come across many merchants and government officials, who speculated during the famine, Virji Vohra is not mentioned among them). Immediately after his imprisonment, the merchant mobilised his numerous contacts at court. His agent in Agra talked with some noblemen of influence, and their advice was to settle the argument with gifts, as the ˙akìm, who was “Asaf Khan’s favourite”, held high office at court.13 In May 1638 the merchant was released, after he had promised the ˙akìm “to respectfully honour His Majesty”.14 Notice that he held out the prospect of gifts to the king—not to the ˙akìm. This was only the first act of the play. In June 1638 the Mughal official ran him in again, this time together with his two sons.15 Again, Virji Vohra refused self-confidently to pay him anything unless they could show him an appeal for imprisonment written by the king himself.16 From the beginning onwards it was clear that Virji Vohra played for high stakes expecting the indictment to come from the Great Mughal, and not from the local official. In fact, with this, he questioned the legitimacy of the local mutaßaddì. All merchants in Surat agreed upon the fact that the imprisonment could have been avoided by the direct payment of some 10,000 rupees to Asaf Khan and the mutaßaddì. As Virji Vohra played for high stakes, people actually expected the whole case might finally cost him a hundred thousand rupees more, although he was charged with “fictitious actions”.17 Apparently, the Governor was not at ease
12 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “C. Jansen Silvius to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Ahmedabad, 26 August 1638”. 13 Ibid. 14 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 101, “W. Geleynssen de Jongh aan B. Pietersen, Agra, 5 June 1638”. 15 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 7 June 1638”. 16 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 20 June 1638”. 17 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 101, “W. Geleynssen de Jongh to B. Pietersen, Agra, 12 July 1638”.
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either because in July 1638 he compiled a new list with as many as 50 offences with which he charged Virji Vohra and he sent this to the Great Mughal. Virji Vohra kept up strong. He denied all charges against him and he declared he was not planning to pay anything, unless “the king himself would issue an injunction”.18 The “indecent and unreasonable procedures” of the ˙akìm frightened the merchants in Surat. Virji Vohra was not the only victim of his actions; other merchants as well as farmers from the surroundings of Surat experienced serious trouble because of his unjustified summons. According to the VOC-Director, the violence was beyond hope and worse than any force previously used in Gujarat.19 This had everything to do with the Governor’s financial position; it was not able to raise the amount of money needed for the office he held. He was short on as many as 500,000 ma˙mùdìs for the 2.4 million ma˙mùdìs (around 1.2 million guilders) rent he had to pay annually. It would not take long for the Great Mughal to replace him, as people expected in Surat. The Company on the contrary, did not experience any difficulties from the ˙akìm’s side whatsoever. He was and would always remain “rather favourable and benevolent towards the VOC”.20 The main reason for this was the 400,000-ma˙mùdìs loan the Company had drawn from the royal treasury with his consent; the bilateral credit agreement between borrower and lender explained the fine relationship. In August 1638 the Governor imprisoned, in addition to Virji Vohra and his sons also his grandchildren and put them away in an underground jail. It finally began to dawn on the merchants in Surat that this case could only be solved at court. Some people of influence dared to speak up for the merchant. So, the ßùbadàr (provincial Governor) of Ahmadabad, Azam Khan, wrote the Governor in Surat an official letter on behalf of Virji Vohra, but that was all in vain. Meanwhile, Virji Vohra had sent “solicitors” to Agra to complain about the suffered grievous wrongs.21 The result was that the
18 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 18 July 1638”. 19 Ibid. 20 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 7 October 1638”. 21 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 18 July 1638”.
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high ranked nobleman Jafar Khan from Agra wrote a letter about the case to an official in Surat, but this letter was cunningly intercepted by the mutaßaddì. Some weeks later, Virji Vohra was chained “and not seldom threatened with beatings”. The Mughal official continued to collect serious offences the financier could be charged with. To achieve this, he went as far as torturing people. Under pressure they declared that Virji Vohra had committed adultery and that he had committed murder. In the meantime the Virji Vohra case caused serious tension between the officials in Surat. The Governor had, refraining from informing the mutaßaddì, reported earlier to the king about the imprisonment, as well as about the loan from the treasury, with which the Dutch had been granted without the court’s consent.22 Through those mutual offences the relationship between local officials had become “rather hostile”. In October 1638 the news was released that the mutaßaddì ordered again a sound trashing for Virji Vohra and his two sons. By torturing he hoped to find out in what business or goods Virji Vohra had invested his capital. Meanwhile he wrote the court that the merchant’s capital was worth forty làkh (four million rupees), but he had only been able to retrace 6 to 7. Virji Vohra did not give in to all the violence, and endured it “with courageous bravery”.23 When the court received so many different and conflicting signals about the affair, the Great Mughal had enough of it and he sent out an a˙adì (an officer directly serving the Great Mughal) from Burhanpur, and ordered to bring Virji Vohra, and the prosecutors to the court, so that the case could be examined down to the last detail. The news that a delegate from the Great Mughal was sent out for both plaintiffs and accused to report in person at the court, alarmed people in Surat “who had accused him and had given him real trouble, concerned about their futures”.24 Again we notice that the affair was not simply a solo-action by the ˙akìm; he was incited to action by others. Indeed, the a˙adì arrived with a warrant that
22 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 7 October 1638”. 23 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 25 October 1638”. 24 Ibid.
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summoned the Governor, Virji Vora and the accusers at court. The mutaßaddì was insolent and refused to obey the order, since he was concerned about the outcome of the investigation. A blazing row between the two gentlemen was the result, taking place in the presence of the VOC-Director and other merchants! Harsh words were spoken, but the a˙adì left empty-handed.25 A month later, in November 1638, while Virji Vohra and his family were still imprisoned, the succession of the ˙akìm by a new mutaßaddì was announced in Surat. Mir Musa, the new mutaßaddì who had held office in Surat before, was an old acquaintance of the Company. There seems to have been no relation between the fact that the Governor was replaced just then and the Virji Vohra-affair. Mir Musa was simply prepared to pay a much higher rent than his predecessor. The new Governor arrived in the city in early 1639, and he was received joyfully.26 Whereas the ˙akìm just previously had refused to travel to court with Virji Vohra and his accusers, he changed his strategy out of sheer necessity. He ordered the release of Virji Vohra and sent him, while he was still chained, to the court.27 It was not without reason, was the Director’s comment in Surat, that the ˙akìm got his nickname the “camel”, because he never let go of what he has in his possession!28 Even though he was removed from office, he did indeed not intend to give up and he was determined to plead his case against Virji Vohra in court personally.29 In the meanwhile, one of Virji Vohra’s sons requested the VOC in Agra to stand surety for a payment in case Virji Vohra would want to negotiate a loan. The Director in Surat granted the request and instructed the VOC servant in Agra accordingly, because, like he said, it would not harm the VOC in any way. The Company would not be held responsible for this promise; Virji Vohra had enough resources at his disposal for his final release and he was not in need of sureties. The stage moved towards Agra and the Mughal court. At the end
25 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 30 October 1638”. 26 NA, VOC 1132, “B. Pietersen to Gentlemen XVII, Surat, 22 January 1639”, unf. 679v. 27 Ibid. 28 NA, VOC 1119, “B. Pietersen to A. van Diemen, Surat, 23 June 1636”, f. 1839. 29 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 110, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 19 December 1638”.
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of January 1639 Virji Vohra and some guards arrived in Agra. He was no longer chained. The VOC-agent Geleynssen de Jongh visited him several times in Agra. A week later, he was escorted to Lahore, where the court resided at that time. He immediately approached Asaf Khan “as mediator”.30 After a 50,000-rupees reward Asaf Khan agreed. This was an important breakthrough, since before Asaf Khan had always supported the ˙akìm unqualified. It was a good omen and thus the merchants in Agra expected him to regain his freedom as soon as he would be able to pay a large sum of money for it. According to Geleynssen all the difficulties could have been avoided; if only he would not have been such a man of principle! While in Agra Virji Vohra told him the whole affair was all his own fault because of his sins and not that of others.31 During the next few months Virji Vohra, by then released on bail, followed the court. The ˙akìm had not yet arrived in Agra and Virji Vohra’s case had still not appeared in court. Virji Vohra had little choice but to make “many friends with presents”.32 The longer it lasted, the more pessimistic the merchants became in Surat and Agra. The pessimism increased by the news that in Surat Mir Musa had received a King’s order to demand the money, loaned by Virji Vohra, from the English, the Dutch and a Hindu agent. The total sum was almost 400,000 rupees. The money should have been sent to Daulatabad to Prince Aurangzeb, the King’s son. But the Companies did not intend to do so. The VOC briefly announced that the Mughals simply had to wait until the Company’s ships would arrive in September or maybe in October. But even then they refrained from paying.33 At the end of July 1639 the ˙akìm finally arrived in Agra, from where he continued his travels towards Lahore in early September. In Agra he awaited the end of the monsoon, and the sale of goods he had imported took longer than expected.34 He was obviously not
30 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 103, “W. Geleynssen de Jongh to B. Pietersen, Agra, 25 March 1639”. 31 Ibid. 32 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 103, “W. Geleynssen de Jongh to B. Pietersen, Agra, 30 July 1639”. 33 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 110, “B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de Jongh, Surat, 24 June 1639”. 34 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 97A, “W. Geleynssen de Jongh to B. Pietersen, Agra, 27 August 1639”.
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very much in a hurry. The next months, the VOC received only sporadically information about the developments as the case was taken to the court in Lahore. By January 1640 the case still had not appeared in court.35 Shortly after that, Geleynssen himself left Agra, so that we do not have detailed information about the close of the affair. Virji Vohra must have regained his freedom one way or the other, because in early May 1640 he left Agra for Surat, where he arrived towards the end of June. His creditworthiness appeared not to have suffered immensely; because when he passed through Agra on his way to Surat, he granted the East India Company a loan.36 The conflict was still not over. The Mughal authorities had tried earlier to get hold of the loan Virji Vohra had granted the English and Dutch, but with no success. Now the western merchants were prohibited to repay him their loans. This was against the farmàn, carried by Virji Vohra, and it cost Virji Vohra 10,000 rupees slush money paid to Mir Musa before he was given permission to receive his own money.37 Besides, it was revealed that Virji Vohra had stored almost 200,000 rupees in a chest in the Dutch factory, since he considered it too dangerous to keep the money in his home. As an excellent merchant, he had, during his imprisonment, sounded the VOC about the possibility of negotiating a loan. The Company, good merchants just like Virji Vohra, had been willing to do so, but they had requested a lower interest than the current market interests!38 Only in mid-1641 did peace rule, at least for the time being. Virji Vohra had regained his freedom on payment of a few hundred thousand rupees. The “official” gift for the Great Mughal had come to, according to reports, a 100,000 rupees. No doubt, he had to pay certain noblemen an amount many times larger than the gift, to make sure they cared about his case and to have a finger in the pie when it came to decision making. His creditworthiness and his career as financier and successful merchant had not suffered considerably. During the imprisonment, his sons had continued the trade on a modest scale. Upon his return, Virji Vohra again joined the con35 NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 97A, “W. Geleynssen de Jongh to B. Pietersen, Agra, 30 January 1640”. 36 NA, VOC 1134, “Extract C. Weiland to P. Croock, Agra, 30 May 1640”, unf. 534. 37 Ibid. 38 NA, VOC 1134, “P. Croocq to A.v. Diemen, Surat, 26 October 1640”, f. 149v.
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sortium that purchased the VOC’s goods. Neither would the accuser Masih al-Zaman’s career suffer from the conflict. At the end of 1639, he took up office as mìr sàmàn, head of the royal workshops. During the following years the Mughal officials’ and the Indian merchants’ envy towards this Indian merchant, monopolising VOC’s imported goods year after year, would live on indeed. The Mughals were extremely focused on these gains and they kept looking for ways to cream off the profits.39 In the 1650’s, the Governor in Surat, under the authority of the Great Mughal, imposed a special 100,000rupee levy on Virji Vohra on account of the exorbitant profits he was assumed to make given his special relationship with the VOC. The VOC lodged a complaint with the court, fearing official interference in its trade. According to the VOC servant at that time in Agra, Shah Jahan showed a displeased reaction to the VOC’s complaint. Translated from Persian, he said presumably something like: “Virji Vohra is my subject and given his richness the levy is only small. And by the way, this is none of the Dutch’s nor the British’s business.” When the VOC persevered with sending complaints, Shah Jahan became irritated and exclaimed: “why is it that the Dutch write so extensively about this Virji Vohra, in what way does it cause them inconveniences”?40 He did not cancel the extra taxes. The result was that Virji Vohra himself went to the court to plead his own case. This time he went of his free will and unchained, unlike what happened in 1639. At the court, he was received in a respectable manner and, in fact, it is reported that the Great Mughal gave him an elephant, which was the greatest honour, and that several noblemen donated him eleven horses.41 The merchant returned with a farmàn, which contained the ingenious solution. The levying of taxes was not abolished, yet the other participants in the consortium that purchased the VOC’s goods had to share in the costs pro rata to come up with the levy. Through expensive gifts to the Great Mughal and the noblemen the merchant passed part of the expenses wisely onto his colleagues.
39 Apparently, the trade was so lucrative that in 1646, Virji Vohra proposed to not only purchase the entire VOC load intended for India, but also the one intended for Persia. He would sell the spices and other goods in Persia through his network. The VOC rejected the proposal. 40 NA, VOC 1201, “J. Berkhout to G. Pelgrom, Agra, 23 August 1653”, f. 720–1. 41 NA, VOC 1210, “Dagregister Surat, 30 January 1656”, f. 767.
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This episode in the career of one of the most successful merchants of Mughal India shows something of the complex relationship between the authorities and the merchants. We could simply dispose the whole history as an example of the Mughal officials’ exploitative behaviour towards financiers with capital. That certainly has been the case too. But we should also observe that the jealous merchants in Surat at least gave their tacit consensus to the extortion. Envy stemmed from his success as an entrepreneur and especially from the privileged position he enjoyed with the VOC. The VOC was directly involved in the affair and it was of the foremost importance it steered a middle course. On the one hand Virji Vohra’s position as purchaser of VOC’s goods and being the VOC’s essential exchange broker and financial backer guaranteed him the certainty that the VOC would give support when needed. On the other hand, the VOC did not at all intend to put at risk its close relationship with the Governor, who had granted the Company a considerable loan. The conflict was brought to a head by Virji Vohra’s proud and conscientious attitude by refusing to deal with the case at a local level, but instead making an appeal to the authority and justice of the Great Mughal himself. It would be taking it too far to explain the rise of merchants like Virji Vohra exclusively by their lucrative relationships with the Companies. But the fact is that some entrepreneurs took advantage of the good prospects that the rise of newcomers in the business offered in an admirable way. Virji Vohra was clearly one of them. The prospects were mostly offered in the field of financing and bills of exchange and in distribution of the VOC’s goods. In these areas the westerners were in need of Indian merchants of stature who were capable of carrying out these specialised services for the Company. This led not only to close cooperation, but even to a sort of symbiosis between local Indian entrepreneurs and western trade organisations. The close collaboration between the western trade organisations and the Indian financiers that came into existence already during the seventeenth century would become even closer during the rise of the British during the eighteenth century. But I note here that the close relationship dates back to the first decades of the seventeenth century.
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Conclusion: VOC sources Many studies on the VOC in India focus exclusively on trade and economy. Yet this should not lead to the conclusion that the VOC was engaged with trade figures only. Of importance is the integral approach by the VOC. Military affairs, politics and economics were closely related—there was no trader who was more aware of this than the VOC. Trade figures dominate the VOC archives, that is true, but in the regular reports the political news nicely comes off second. There is even a third layer: on top of economic and political data we find a broader humanistic approach with a number of the company’s servants, that led, for example, to the Chronicle and Remonstrance of Francisco Pelsaert, and the Remonstrance of Geleynssen de Jongh, with its unique, almost anthropological account of various religious sects in Bharuch in the seventeenth century. To conclude I suggest that a much more thorough and systematic research in the Dutch archives would be necessary and indeed fruitful. Thanks to the monumental work of Jos Gommans, Lennart Bes and Gijs Kruijtzer an easily accessible guide to the Dutch archives on South Asia is now available. It will certainly facilitate historians’ efforts to plan where to dig.42 Or put differently: there is no excuse any more for historians on Mughal India not to make use of the vast Dutch records! The guide makes abundantly clear that the Dutch sources have much more to offer than only the yearly price fluctuations of calicoes or market information on cloves. There is a vast array of topics to be studied further, both economic and political ones. In fact, they may even provide interesting details such as the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan wearing glasses (which was new to me) and being rather stingy (which we knew already from other western sources).
42 Jos Gommans, Lennart Bes, and Gijs Kruijtzer, Dutch Sources on South Asia, c. 1600–1825, Vol. 1: Bibliography and Archival Guide to the National Archives at The Hague (The Netherlands) (New Delhi, 2001).
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TO BE A SERVANT OF HIS CATHOLIC MAJESTY: INDIAN TROOPS OF THE ESTADO DA ÍNDIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY1 René Barendse Introduction: The military fiscal state It is a well established fact that collaboration by Indian mercenary soldiers, sailors and even merchants was critical to the foundation of Portuguese dominion in Asia in the sixteenth century as well as to its survival in the seventeenth.2 As Luis Felipe Thomaz has argued, the Estado da Índia passed through several different institutional shapes during its long history.3 Change had already been discernible in the late seventeenth century when the Estado passed from a merchant and sailor to a landlord and peasant society. In the eighteenth century, the Estado completely changed both its territorial shape as well as its institutions. This is a point that needs emphasis since the history of the Europeans in the Indian Ocean is almost as a matter of course written in the evolutionary pattern. The “Portuguese” stand for the “feudal” early stage of European expansion, the Dutch for the intermediate “mercantile capitalist” stage and the English “winners” for the mature “industrial capitalist” stage. There is a big risk in using such an evolutionary model: the habitual way of “comparing” Portuguese institutions in the early sixteenth century with those of the British in the mid-eighteenth is but an apples and oranges comparison. The Estado in the sixteenth century ought to be “compared” to European states of the sixteenth century.
1 Research for this contribution has been made possible by a grant from the Royal Dutch Academy of Science. 2 See, for example, the two good overviews by G.V. Scammel, “Indigenous Assistance in the Establishment of Portuguese Power in the Sixteenth Century” in D.M. Peers (ed.) Warfare and Empires (London, Variorum, 1997), and “The Pillars of Empire: Indigenous Assistance and the Survival of the Estado da Índia” Modern Asian Studies, 22 (1988), pp. 473–89. 3 L. Felipe Thomaz, “Goa: uma sociedade Indo Portuguêsa”, in, De Ceuta a Timor (Lisbon, 1994), pp. 245–90.
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But let me immediately add that there is a risk involved in Luís Felipe Thomaz’s writings too: its tendency to study the Portuguese in isolation from both the Indian world and from the wider European developments and to deny any similarity with what was happening in the other European states in Asia. I would argue that what was happening in the Estado was broadly parallel to what was happening in the East India Company states (namely “the VOC-state” and in the early British Raj) in the eighteenth century. I would conceive this in two ways. The eighteenth century in the Estado, as much as in the state of the English East India Company (EIC), might be seen as that “passing of the Indian ancien régime”, which is so well described in Dirk Kolff ’s classic article.4 What happened in this period was that Indian ancien régime institutions were absorbed into an emerging “new” colonial order and then gradually hollowed out from within. I would term this new regime arising in the Estado as well as in the EIC state in the mid-eighteenth century the “military fiscal state”. For not merely the British but all major European states in Asia (British, Portuguese and Dutch) turned into “military fiscal” states in the eighteenth century. There are several reasons for this, which I can only outline here in very brief compass. One reason was that in the eighteenth century transaction costs (interest-rates, rates of marine insurance and information costs) in the East Indies trade declined. The East India Companies had originally been founded to lower such transaction costs through economies of scale. In the course of the eighteenth century this comparative advantage began to get less important, whereas the competitive disadvantage, namely the expensive system of purchase through a bureaucracy, began to hamper the commerce of the European states in Asia more and more. Whereas in the seventeenth century the Dutch were able to finance themselves by the conduct of intra-Asian trade—and the Estado da Índia in the early seventeenth century was just about able to cover its expenses through selling concessionary voyages—in the eighteenth century commerce was taken over by private entrepreneurs. Such “country traders” were working far cheaper than the intra-Asian
4 D.H.A. Kolff, “The End of an Ancien Régime: Colonial Wars in India 1798–1818” in J.A. de Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds), Imperialism and War (Leiden, 1989), pp. 22–50.
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trade of the East India Companies, or the boards allowed to conduct a monopoly trade in the Portuguese case. This left a bureaucratic and military establishment “stranded” which had to seek for revenue in another way: by direct taxation of the Indian population and by the land revenue. Second, and this is critical in the present context, the increasing military presence and the increasing reliance of all European states on land revenue to pay for the army also resulted from increasing “Asian” military pressure on the European states. This has many reasons but the most important one was that, because the overhead costs in the Indian Ocean trade were higher than those in the European trade, the only way country traders could be assured of a profit was by obtaining a monopoly over goods and eliminating their Asian competitors. This was rightly conceived by the Indian states as a direct assault on both their sovereignty and their taxrevenues. Hence they began to see the Europeans as a direct threat in the eighteenth century. The Europeans no longer had to fight the small forces of local potentates, as in the seventeenth century, but rather the main armies of large Indian states. In turn this led to the increasing militarising of the European settlements. However, we have to be careful with the concept of the military fiscal state. For John Brewer’s definition of the military fiscal state is in some ways too general to be of much use.5 If a “military fiscal state” simply means that it is a state levying taxes through a professional cadre of civil servants to pay for the expenses of armies and fleets and that it has a huge debt, then I doubt whether sixteenth-century Castille does not already qualify as such a state. The Tudor state did not have much of a professional bureaucracy but the Hapsburg Empire surely did. And this is true not only for Europe. As recent “revisionist” studies of Portuguese India in the sixteenth century have been arguing, it is all too easy to fall into the infamous black legend when dealing with Portuguese India. By sixteenth century standards at least, the Estado was ruled by a thoroughly professional and highly committed bureaucracy.6
5 J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power; War, Money and the English State 1688–1783 (London, 1989). 6 For an overview see C. Madeira Santos, Goa é a chave de toda a Índia. Perfil político da capital do Estado da Índia (1505–1570) (Lisbon, 1999).
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This applies even more to the Estado da Índia in the eighteenth century, which by any standard could be conceived of as much a military fiscal state as the Raj. A good way to establish this is to consider the income and expenditure for a single year viz. 1760.7 Portuguese income in that year amounted to 1,666,073 xeraphins (i.e. c. 800,000 sicca rupees). Of this income only 136,150 was directly derived from trade, consisting by and large of the customs on the Carreira da Índia ships arriving at Goa. The Carreira da Índia did far better in the eighteenth century than it had done in the seventeenth.8 Virtually all of the rest of the income was derived from taxes and tax-farms on the territorial possessions in Goa, Salcete and Bardes. This was an area of about 200,000 inhabitants. By comparison, Bengal with about 32 million inhabitants yielded in 1763 a revenue of 25 million rupees.9 Discounting the loss of purchasing power of the xeraphin in the interim, this revenue was about five times higher than the revenue Goa yielded in the seventeenth century. Not only was the Estado da Índia able to squeeze vastly more money out of the Bardes’ and Salcete’s peasantry than it was able to in the seventeenth century but it also seems likely that the peasants of Goa were in the eighteenth century the most heavily taxed of the whole of India. The Estado was the only state in India in the eighteenth century which levied a direct income tax on its population (the so called dizimos prediaes).10 If the definition of “military fiscalism” is “that an aristocratic and unrepresentative regime serviced by an ostensibly incompetent and corrupt administration somehow managed to still appropriate a remarkable share of the national income from a people often deemed ungovernable” that may be said for the Estado as much as for Hanoverian England.11 For it was not only the English who were
7 Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon (AHU), Papeis vulsos da Índia—não inventarisadas—new numbering, Caixa 108, “Mappa das receitas e depezas que teve a fazenda Real em Goa, anno de 1760”. 8 See V. Magalhães Godinho, Mito e mercadoria, utopia e prática de navegar (séculos XIII–XVIII) (Lisbon, 1990), pp. 345–8. 9 W.K. Firminger (ed.), The Fifth Report on East India Company Affairs 1812, 3 Vols (Calcutta 1917/ New York, 1969), Vol. 3, p. 260. 10 For the early seventeenth century see V. Magalhães Godinho, Les finances de l’état Portugais des Indes (Paris, 1971). 11 P.K. O’Brien, “Trade, Economy, State and Empire”, in, The Oxford History of the British Empire. The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), p. 67 see also F. O’Gorman, “The Recent Historiography of the Hanoverian Regime” Historical Journal, 19 (1986), pp. 1005–20.
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deemed an ungovernable people. “In India corruption has now reached such a lamentable state that there is no law, no justice and no authority any more, which can inhibit the private greed and those robbers, who have converted the goods of your Majesty to their private uses.” This might well have been Diego de Couto writing in 1590, but it actually is the Minister for Colonies writing in 1770. But despite all this ubiquitous corruption this administrative apparatus was able to extract the highest revenue from its population as compared to any other Indian state.12 Yet if the military fiscal state is in some ways too general a concept, in other ways it is too specific; it is too much tailored on the English state to be of much use for explaining anything but the situation in England. I will hence have to resort to a more specific definition of what the “military fiscal state” entailed in India. The military fiscal state which arose in both British and Portuguese India (and in the VOC-state in Java, Ceylon and to a certain extent in Kerala too) had in my view two distinguishing characteristics. First, it was fiscal: it mainly derived its income from land revenue. Taxation was “total” as the military fiscal state did not recognise the highly individualised exemptions from taxation, or the institutionalised loopholes to escape taxes in respect of both persons as well as communities, which were characteristic of the Indian ancien régime. And taxation was individual; tax was levied on the basis of a field to field, or at least a village to village assessment, rather than an overall revenue assessment of entire districts, deriving from long standing local custom. This was levied by an “impersonal” bureaucracy, the characteristic of which is, very succinctly put, that it is ideally immaterial what person fulfils a certain specific task. Second, it was military: it was new in attempting to pacify Indian society, or at least to obtain a monopoly on violence. For if—as Kolff has rightly argued—the Mughal state never had an effective monopoly on violence, that was equally true for the Estado da Índia in the seventeenth century. Besides the army of the state there then existed a plethora of private militias who were mustered by individual nobles ( fidalgos). This was particularly so in Bassein and its territory (the Praças do Norte) where the fidalgos’ private armies more
12
Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (I/ANTT), Manuscritos da Livrária, 2604, “Martinho de Mello e Castro to Mârques de Pombal, 20 April 1770”, f. 3v.
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or less were the Portuguese army, but it also held true for Goa. There too the fidalgos were assisted by private militias, often consisting of their black slaves. Moreover the countryside of the Praças do Norte in particular, but to some extent of Goa too were still heavily armed societies, where most peasants had spears and often matchlocks at home. This was one factor accounting for the heavy rate of casualties in robberies and duels in Portuguese India: “whereas in Portugal you count so many assaults, in India you count so many casualties”, it was said in the seventeenth century.13 In the eighteenth century, however, the military fiscal state began increasingly to curtail this private exercise of violence. The state outlawed the private feuding amongst villages, always rife in India (and Goa was in that respect no exception), which habitually led to bloodshed. The chiefs (gavcars) of the village of Coculim in Salcete testified that when there was “great unrest” (grandes alterações) between their village and neighbouring Veroda, a feud which had come to such a pitch that even the parish priest of Coculim was killed by the people of Veroda, Govind Rao, captain of the sepoys (cabo das cipayes), had intervened by sending his “boys” (os seus filhos) to interpose themselves betwixt the two villages and by disarming the two parties.14 Furthermore the state increasingly curtailed the private possession of arms. One of the first regulations emanating from the administration in Goa on the annexation of the Bicholim, Zimbaulim and Ponda districts (the Conquistas Novas) was a prohibition to wear swords and carry firearms and spears in public. The sepoy guards of the Conquistas Novas were to impose fines on peasants in possession of arms and to confiscate the weapons found.15
Indo-Portuguese lascarins The main instrument for this pacification was the “modern” sepoy army. The modern European army in India (English, French and Portuguese and Dutch) had three characteristics which made it
13 R.J. Barendse, Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (Armonk N.Y., 2002), p. 115. 14 AHU, Índia, Caixa 101, “Carta de Certidão (c. 1720)”. 15 AHU, Índia Caixa 309, “Bando geral que deve ser publiado de som de instromentos bellicos nas três provinçias de Ponda, Zambaulim e Canocana (1768)”.
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different from “traditional” Indian armies. Firstly, as is widely recognised in the literature, was its emphasis on drill. Indian armies had long used drill, but the object of such drills was to develop the individual fighting skill of the soldiers. The object of “modern drill” by contrast was to turn the soldier into an obeying automaton who was interchangeable with the man next to him. This ideally entailed that European-trained infantry could deliver a higher volume of fire than Indian soldiers could. In the Estado da Índia the sepoys were to be drilled twice (and the mounted forces three times) a week. Secondly, the troops were permanently quartered in barracks. They were not allowed to roam around or leave the district in which the barracks were located, when they were on leave, without explicit permission thereto by their commanding officers.16 The third distinguishing characteristic was “command and control”. In traditional Indian armies the soldiers were dependent on patronage of their leaders. The officers were hence not interchangeable and the various wings of the army had separate commanders who might not obey commands from headquarters. The problems in co-ordinating larger armies made Indian armies extremely vulnerable to defeat in pitched battles. The distinguishing characteristic of this new army thus was drill, quartering in barracks, and command and control, and not so much its weaponry. Since in a comparison between the armament of Indian states and European armaments in India I would obviously have to deal with European states other than the Portuguese this would surpass my compass here.17 Suffice to say that in the eighteenth century Portuguese weapons were in some ways slightly superior to Indian weapons. This was particularly so for infantry weapons: field guns and grenades which were entirely supplied from Portugal in the eighteenth century, unlike in the seventeenth when the Portuguese partly fabricated their arms in India and often used captured Indian ones. This would obviously not have made sense if such Portuguese arms were no better than Indian ones. But let us not fall into a technological “fix”. This slight superiority in weapons did not spare the Estado the humiliation of its worst ever defeat. In 1739 the Estado da Índia hovered as close to the brink 16
AHU, Índia, Caixa 309, “Regimento das tropas de sepoys”. See the—in my view, however, far from adequate—discussion in P.J. Marshall, “Western Arms in Maritime Asia in the Early Phase of European Expansion”, Modern Asian Studies, 14 (1980), pp. 13–28. 17
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of total collapse as it ever came. The Praças do Norte—on whose fortifications Portuguese engineers had been toiling for two centuries—were overrun by the Maratha armies. Bassein, certainly one of the strongest fortresses in the whole of India and the summit of everything European ingenuity in fortress building had to offer in Asia, fell after an epic six months’ siege. And Goa itself was spared only by paying cauth—a landlord’s levy of one-fourth on the land revenue—to Balaji Rao’s victorious armies, who had overrun all of Bardes and Salcete. This near collapse was followed by a series of eventually victorious campaigns against the neighbouring rajas of Sunda (a principality annexed by the Portuguese), against the Marathas (who had overrun parts of Sunda) and above all against their next door neighbour, and their best enemy (ladrão da casa) as the Portuguese used to say, the Maratha chiefdom of Savantvad.18 The Portuguese, because of the Savant’s close family-ties with Shahu’s family, generally called them “the Bhonsle”. Yet those ultimately successful campaigns were punctuated by humiliating defeats and in particular by the ignominious one of 1756, during the attempt to take Marnagath fortress by storm, in the course of which no lesser a person than the Viceroy himself, the Conde de Alva, was killed. These campaigns were finally closed-off by the annexation of the adjacent provinces of Goa, the Conquistas Novas, in 1762. The Estado da Índia effectively tripled in size in 1762. However, the thinly populated and little cultivated Conquistas Novas could in no way compensate for the loss of Bassein, the rice-bowl of the northwest coast of India. Goa had to subsidise the Conquistas Novas with 35,000 xeraphins yearly, for the Bhonsles were, as the Viceroy Conde de Ega argued: “by nature ferocious and unreliable (de hum genio grosseiro)” and might always be tempted to invade. And—more importantly—Ega thought revolts by the chiefs and by the peasants “can in no way be avoided”. The Portuguese had ideally to station garrisons in virtually every village in the Conquistas Novas.19 This meant that the conquest of the Conquistas Novas was followed by prolonged “pacification-campaigns”. Although these increasingly began to resemble the nineteenth century’s colonial “little wars” such cam-
18 19
See S.K. Mhamai, The Sawants of Vadi and the Portuguese (New Delhi, 1984). AHU, Índia, Caixa 305, “Conde de Ega to Crown, 1 February 1760”.
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paigns were initially still pretty much fought out in terms of a typical ancien-régime kind of Indian warfare.20 Take, for example, the case of Pedro Vicente de Vidal during his expedition against the desàì of Uspa in Bicholim in 1747. In Bicholim his two hundred sepoys were to be quartered in and maintained through the revenue of villages assigned to the Portuguese by treaty between the Estado and their ally Satroji Raja, then still formally a subject of Savantvadi. Vicente de Vidal was fighting on behalf of the Marathas and his normal way of fighting was virtually identical to that of the Marathas. He had to “raise the bamboo fences and burn the houses” within the desàì ’s fortified compound with its earth wall surrounded by bamboo fences. He was also to try to capture his family members and those of his allied warlords, Ragunat Pant and Zabardast Khan, so as to force them into negotiations with the Portuguese. In the meantime he had “to incessantly go on with raiding and to capture all the cattle which is, when it is seized, to be sent to Bicholim (fortress) and placed under proper guard.” The terminology is interesting here: this kind of small, highly formalised, “war”—if not simple robbery—constantly with an eye towards strengthening one’s bargaining position was more or less alien to metropolitan Portuguese practices. So the scribes of the chancellery resorted to Marathi to describe it: De Vidal was to fazer rassoa (razzia karnen) in Bicholim.21 The exchange of Conquistas Novas, however impressive they might look on the map, with Praças do Norte was then not a good one. And it was in fact only the loss of Bassein which finally relegated the Estado da Índia to the status of a second-rate power in terms of both its revenue and its population on the Indian west coast. But through the allotment of huge subsidies from Portugal and Brazil the Estado da Índia continued to be a first rate military power on the west coast. Those grants from the metropolis allowed the Estado to continue employing a regular European troop strength of 1,600 to 2,000 men. But such European troops were still very much auxiliary to the Asian forces of the Portuguese in the eighteenth century and very 20 For which now see J. Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Frontiers and High Roads to Empire 1500–1700 (London, 2002). 21 Bibliotheca Municipal, Évora, Portugal, Códice CXX/2–2, “Instrução passado a Pedro Vicente Vidal, Sargente Mor, enginheiro deste Estado, 20 June 1747”, f. 332.
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much dependent upon Indian “collaboration”. At the most basic level the villages had to pay for the expenses of the Portuguese garrison and fortifications in both Goa and Bassein. This was a very ancient usage going back at least to the fifteenth century, if not earlier in both Goa and Praças do Norte. For example, the village of Calangute was assigned to the Aguado-fortress, guarding the entrance to the Mandovi. The peasants of Calangute had to do manorial labour on the walls of Aguado and Calangute’s village militia had to send soldiers to act as sentries in the fortress.22 Furthermore the territory of Goa had since the sixteenth century onward regularly provided large numbers of troops to the Portuguese. At its height in the mid-seventeenth century the strength of the irregular village militias there was estimated at 45,000 for Goa, Bardes and Salcete together. For if the period of the war with the Dutch was a disastrous period for the Portuguese empire in Asia as a whole, it was later on considered rather a good one for the villages of Bardes and Salcete, where agriculture was thriving. The Maratha invasion of both in 1683, however, inflicted disastrous damage on Bardes in particular. It caused “great mortality and great numbers of refugees, so that the population has practically halved”. Whereas in the midseventeenth century the senado da câmara of Bardes had to equip and pay for 4000 men, “with their weapons and powder and bullets”, by the late seventeenth century this had diminished to but a few hundred only.23 Already in 1704, because of the lack of Portuguese troops and the decline of the village-militias, the Crown had been pleading with the Viceroy to raise seven regular companies from the brahmans and from Goa’s kshatriya caste, the Chardos, “the last ones being not at all as incapable as is generally thought”. These were to be drilled as regular European troops (the idea of subjecting Indian troops to European drill thus far precedes Dupleix). The Viceroy, Caetano de Mello e Castro said he would comply—as ever being a loyal vassal of His Majesty—but protested that the real problem was that the Portuguese troops wanted to go back to the delights of Portugal as
22 Bibliotheca Nacional, Lisbon (BNL), Códices Pombalina 667, “Philipe Valaderes to General of Bardes, 30 October 1752”, f. 32. 23 AHU, Índia, Caixa 86, “Noticias que se pode achar sobre a naração que fez a càmara geral de Bardes, s.d. (1690)”.
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soon as possible. “Since they all seek shelter in ports where the English have populations or factories”, the best solution to the shortage of troops would be to demand from the English not to transport any Portuguese to Europe anymore. Caetano de Mello e Castro also warned the king that the brahmans had as little enthusiasm to enlist as the Viceroy was enthusiastic in enlisting them. Small wonder that according to the classic Iberian administrative practice Caetano de Mello e Castro “obeyed but did not implement” the order.24 Viceroy Conde de Sandomil had, the senado da câmara of Goa thought, later on tried to raise a militia of 3,000 men from Goa’s population but they had proven utterly useless during the Maratha invasion of 1739, even though their ancestral homes were in direct peril. “The natives have not the slightest propensity towards the exercise of arms” and the new attempt of the Conde de Ega to raise a mercenary force of 500 soldiers from Goa would likewise, the council thought, prove to be an utter failure.25 Yet Dom António de Noronha, bishop of Mylapur, (who ought to have known since he was the main person in charge of the campaigns to pacify the Conquistas Novas and named “general of Ponda” in reward)26 thought in 1764 that all this talk about the inhabitants of Goa being useless to wear arms was but a racist subterfuge for not trying to enlist them at all. It was a subterfuge for not paying and feeding the soldiers properly besides; if they were no good anyway they deserved no proper pay either. The situation had become so bad, Noronha thought, that even the Portuguese soldiers had to resort to robbing fishermen to get something to eat. Their own soldiers were “turning out to be the most dangerous pirates” on the Mandovi. After all, Noronha argued, there was a diaspora of some 20,000 topazes from Goa in Kanara and on the Coromandel Coast, many of whom pursued a career in the army. And some of them were renowned throughout India. For example, in Goa it was rumoured that the ruler of Mysore, Haidar Ali, had said that he could not do without the services of Manuel de Sazoa and Christofão Rodriguês.
24 AHU, Índia, Caixa 104, “Carta Regia, 10 January 1704” and answer thereto “December 1705”. 25 AHU, Índia, Caixa 96, “Petition, 6 March 1762”. 26 I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da Índia, Livro 40, “Carta Patente, 17 August 1763”, f. 64v.
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The first was a goldsmith, the latter a shoemaker from the village of Nagoa in Bardes.27 This diaspora from Goa derived mainly from the Catholic peasants in Bardes and Salcete, who being on the lookout for periodic work in Candal and Sunda in the seventeenth century when there was a severe problem of rural unemployment in Bardes, had shifted permanently to the opposite shore and later moved to other parts of India as well.28 Besides this Goan diaspora, there was a strong Indo-Portuguese Lumpenproletariat in India, mainly deriving from Indian untouchables converted to the Catholic religion. As—certainly in very caste conscious Kerala—those dalit topazes found any other career blocked, one of the few ways open for upward mobility to the ambitious sons of such communities was to pursue an employment as a lascarin in the army, whether that be in the VOC’s or the EIC’s service or in that of Travancore.29 If that applied to Cochin, Telicherry and Bombay it also applied to the Praças do Norte where in the eighteenth century the bulk of the army was made up of Catholic lascarins from two groups: the Bandaris or workers in the toddy-trees and the untouchable (Catholic) rural labourers or Curumbis (the modern Kunbis). Captain James Inchbird, sent by the EIC’s board at Bombay to mediate in the handing over of the Portuguese Moro fortress at Chaul to the Marathas and where the English as mediators were to station a force at Chaul in the interim, found his Portuguese counterpart Dom Françisco de Galenfels afraid that he “discovers such a malignant spirit in the padrees, that he is apprehensive they are combining some ill design and afraid they will put the city in flames if not prevented”. He also found the Portuguese garrison close to mutiny. This was partly—though Inchbird obviously did not say this—because the very elite and very Catholic lascarins of Chaul loathed the “amateur” and Protestant English force to whom they had to surrender the fortress. It was surely partly because they had not been paid and not received any provisions for one and a half
27
BNL, Fundo Geral, Códice 555, “Systema Marcial Ásiatico”, f. 205. AHU, Índia, Caixa inventarisada, 42, Document 32, “Board of the Goa Inquisition to Viceroy, 11 January 1698”. 29 On the caste-status and the army of the topazes see the remarks of the raja of Cochin in Nationaal Archief, VOC 1735, Malabar inheems Dagregister, “Ravi Varma I, king of Cochin, to Cornelis Moermans, 11 July 1705”, ff. 140–6. 28
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years. But it was above all, Inchbird thought, because the Chaul lascarins feared that if they were to be sent to Goa they would end “their lives in misery”. By virtue of serving His Catholic Majesty the lascarins of Chaul were men of dignity and status amongst their fellow Curumbis in Chaul whereas, as Inchbird recognised, in Goa they would be little more than castaways 30 The Curumbis of Chaul were not the only example of such permanent military colonies, who, if they were as poor as the surrounding villagers—and if anything were even poorer—still derived much of their dignity from “being a servant of His Catholic Majesty”. “Two hundred five Bandaris from Chaul defend that fortification without any pay but they are merely rewarded with liberty from some local taxes and to a few, who have especially distinguished themselves, is given a premium of 6 xeraphins monthly.”31 Those bachelor mercenaries, living in improvised “slums” next to the Moro, the forty seven settled and Christian Bandari families of Bassein, as well as the seventy-seven similar Bandari families of Chaul, were even by eighteenth-century Portuguese standards (and Portugal was hardly Europe’s wealthiest country) a wretchedly poor community. They were living in little shacks and in the Portuguese revenue terminology they were pensioneiros de seus senhores. They were landless peasants and fishermen (in the rivers) who had the status of glebi adscriptae in both Chaul and Bassein.32 The Indo-Portuguese lascarins such as the Bandari communities of Chaul derived their dignity from the pursuit of arms and from the camaraderie among the members of the warbands rather than from their salary. The hundred lascarins in the garrison at Daman too were similarly stated to be “all desperately poor” and had mostly to subsist on handouts of rice from the celereiro público (the public granary). “The soldiers here” are so poor, “that they go around nude. An affront to both decency and common sense”, the Captain of Daman thought. Yet though these too were by and large agricultural “bonded labourers” their pride and identity was derived from 30 Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London (OIOC), P/341/11, Bombay Public Consultations, “James Inchbird to Bombay Board, 4 November 1740”, f. 452. 31 AHU, Índia, Caixa 206, “Copia da carta que o general do Norte escreveo ao Sr. Vice Rey, 10 July 1733”. 32 AHU, India, Caixa 109, “Christianidade deste freguesia da Senhora de Madre de Deús, Cassabe de Baçaim (1722)”.
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being soldiers. And the EIC indeed widely recruited amongst these topaz communities of Chaul and Daman. For the topazes there were at a meagre pay of 5 rupees monthly about the cheapest skilled soldiers procurable on the Indian West Coast, the English thought.33 While the Portuguese garrisons in the north therefore did not give a very good account of themselves, the most determined resistance against the Marathas (and particularly in the frontier fortifications of the Praças do Norte who were devoid of any metropolitan Portuguese troops, like the Tranqueira da Saibana where the 150 Indian soldiers fought to the last man) was offered by those very same Bandaris and by the amateur Curumbi soldiers. “They are judged to be merely workers in the palm trees, yet by spirit and by their effort they are rather true servants of Mars” certainly more than the Portuguese, Noronha thought. Driven by the surge of a zealous Indian “folk” Catholicism in the eighteenth century instilled by the— by then completely Indian—parish clergy, this “proletarian” resistance against the Marathas was led by a Curumbi whom his brothers in arms knew as “the little carpenter”.34 From among the topas refugees from Salcete, fleeing from the Marathas, the EIC at Bombay had hastily raised 170 men in four topas companies in 1739. The Company had stationed them at Sion. For the English feared that upon the fall of Bassein Bombay was likely to be the next. They were, the Board initially thought, the most skilled and the most highly motivated force on the Indian West Coast, as they had proven during the lengthy siege of Chaul. Yet on closer examination in 1743, the Governor of Bombay thought that the topazes appeared to consider unheard-of insolence and insubordination as normal. There were complaints from their English officers that the topazes thought nothing of leaving their barracks and going to eat in their huts; of taking leave without permit to visit their families, who were still located in Salcete, whenever they liked; or of insulting their officers. Since “of sepoys we can hire as many as we like”, it was decided to dismiss “those lascarins behaving in a mutinous manner.” And “as they must soon be in a starving con-
33 AHU, Índia, Caixa 109, “Resumo das almas Christães na jurisdição de Damão (1723)”; OIOC, P/341/13, Bombay Public Consultations, 20 July 1742, f. 325. 34 BNL, Fundo Geral, Códice 553, “Systema Marcial Ásiatico”, f. 155.
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dition, this will be a means of making the others set a true value upon the service for such pay as they now have”.35 The proud Indo-Portuguese lascarins of the Praças do Norte stuck to a rough sense of camaraderie amongst the ranks, and to a tradition of freely serving in arms. This tradition increasingly conflicted with the petty military “chicken-shit” (as it was called in World War II) of the ever more hierarchic European armies of the eighteenth century. This was not only the English experience though. The LusoIndian soldiers in Manuel Nunes Pintado’s company stationed in the barracks at Rachol in 1744 were accused of not only “not obeying but even insulting their officers without showing them any sign of respect”. And why, in fact, should they have respected their officers? “There are in this state many able and seasoned officers of whom there are but few who do not have scars of ancient wounds”, the Conde de Ega complained to the Crown in 1758. Yet these Indo-Portuguese were commanded by senior officers, who were all newcomers from Portugal. Such reinois were generally still in the cradle when their NCO’s were already officers and soldiers, the Viceroy complained. Obviously, then, veteran Indo-Portuguese lascarins did not think they were wont to pay much respect to such “rookie” ranking commanders. Not only were the NCO’s not particularly motivated to encourage their soldiers to brave deeds if they saw their career blocked by those reinois, it encouraged insubordination of the soldiers too.36 The problem was basically that, since most Portuguese sent to the East were convicts, the few soldiers who did volunteer to serve demanded higher pay and higher military office than they would have received in Portugal. Hence often “there are more officers than soldiers in India” as was complained in 1703. The general of Bardes complained that when officers wanted to punish some culprits among the soldiers in Nunes Pintado’s company, they formed a mutinous crowd. “So that effectively the entire company became an accomplice to a crime.” Whilst in Europe there would be severe corporal punishments on such acts of insubordination, in Portuguese India—though these penalties certainly existed
35 36
OIOC, P/341/13, Bombay Public Consultations, 9 May 1743, f. 142. AHU, Códice 441, “Viceroy to Crown, 13 December 1758”.
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on paper—there was really not much one could do about it. In this concrete case of collective insubordination any attempt to punish only a few culprits would merely lead to the rest of the company deserting to the mainland,37 Lascarin soldiers thus bravely followed their leaders but they stuck to a strict moral code in which they would follow only when they thought they were being treated properly. And though they were very much of peasant stock themselves, the lascarins were often seen by the peasants as a swarm of locusts rather than as brave warriors defending them. In his burning indictment of the entire colonial regime of the Estado da Índia under the motto “Regnum Dei est justitia” called Estado do Estado da Índia, written in 1720, Diego Garcia de Sta. Theresa, then archbishop of Goa, voiced the bitter complaints about the lascarin regular forces from the peasants of Goa. The soldiers, Garcia de Sta. Theresa wrote, raped women, looted the inhabitants, stole fish from the fishermen, or at the very least they would demand free food and very likely free sexual services too, from the inhabitants of the aldeias. And however much one complained to their officers they would always look the other way. That was partly because of the nearly normal insubordination of their lascarin “bands of brothers”. Officers feared that if they inflicted corporal punishment on the soldiers, they might well turn against them-indeed they might even be assassinated by their own lascarins. And partly that was because if the soldiers got free sustenance from the villages, the officers could then pocket the money received for the rations for their soldiers themselves. And “if the government wants to punish them for such crimes the soldiers establish themselves on the other side of the river. And then they immediately prepare a request to demand a safe-conduct to come back in the form of a royal pardon”.38
The “new” sepoys However, these Catholic soldiers were always supplemented by Hindu troops, the sepoys, the word probably coming through Portuguese 37
Évora, Códice CXX/2–2, Bando 29, November 1744, f. 74. I/ANTT, Manuscritos da Livrária, 892, “Estado do Estado da Índia” “poem-se na outra banda e fazem logo petição pedindo seguro na forma das conçessões reaes”. 38
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into the other European languages. The first mention I found of “sepoys” in any European document is in a document from 1676 from Daman.39 “Of sepoys we can have as many as we like” as the Bombay Board rightly said. For there was, as Kolff has shown, a whole system of military paymasters active in the Konkan as much as in Hindustan, who controlled the access to the vast internal market for military manpower and on which the Portuguese relied as much as the English. This was an old established practice.40 The great Essoji Raja Pattacar was the most important recruiter-cum-landlord in the Praças do Norte in the seventeenth century. None of the recruiters active for the Portuguese in the eighteenth century was as powerful as Essoji Raja had been. The late seventeenth century witnessed an all-out attack by both the Portuguese landlords and the church in the north on such entrenched Indian rights to the land as those still possessed by Essoji Raja.41 But we do find a host of smaller Essoji Rajas in the eighteenth century, to whom we shall now turn. Ganesha Rana and Kistaba Rana (very likely Marathas from Bicholim), for example, complained to the Goa authorities in 1732 that they had recruited and were paymasters of a regiment of 650 lascarins (or rather sepoys as they all appear to have been Hindus). With a view to reimburse them for their expenses they had been awarded the product from a couple of rice fields in the villages of Ravara and Nadora in Bardes. In return, their sepoys were “to guard the villages by day and night”. That was partly in order to pacify the villages and partly since these were close to the border with Candal “and are entirely open” for the enemy. Next to payment in kind for their sepoys the two also requested to be paid a sum in cash to allow them to reward their “boys” properly.42 Yet the elite sepoy forces of the Estado in the eighteenth century were what the Portuguese called the “cipayes Patanes” generally recruited 39
Bibiotheca da Academia das Ciências, Lisbon, Manuscritos Azuis, 58, 22 May 1677, f. 219v. 40 D.H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990). 41 See for example the petition of the untouchable, glebae adscripti villagers (stated to be bois (cattle drivers), bandares e curumbins) of the village of Bandora in I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da Índia, Livro 11, “Provisão, 11 January 1702”, f. 38. 42 I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da Índia, Livro 16, “Alvará, 24 July 1732”, f. 120.
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in Daman and Diu. Saiyid Kasim, Muhabbad Khan, Shaikh Daud and Barid Khan Bahadur brought this matter up before the Conselho da fazenda in 1733. They and their soldiers were all “cipayes Patanes”, they said, who had served with “well known valour” in Bassein. But “they are in a new and strange land here, and therefore suffer great misery”. To all appearances those four had come only very recently from Afghanistan, maybe fleeing from Nadir Shah’s advancing armies. Being a Pathan in eighteenth century India was also very much an “assumed” identity though. The fifth commander had the surely not very Afghan name of Gopala Naik. They had been recruited in Diu in 1730 by their broker and paymaster Rama Sinay, one of Goa’s wealthiest merchants. The soldiers of this Afghan lascar in the service of His Catholic Majesty were paid, when enlisting, 8 xeraphins a month and their chiefs got 12 xeraphins for provisioning the soldiers. Besides they would receive tobacco for free and 75 pieces of billet wood a month. “It is normal they receive pay until the day they are discharged, directly in hand”, Rama Sinay testified. But if the soldiers were to engage in fighting the Marathas in the north they wanted additional concessions. The pay of the soldiers was to be raised to 9 xeraphim, that of the leaders to 30 xeraphins. And should “some of them die in combat they want main morte lands ( praços mortos) to support their wives and their children. And they also demand (free) medical assistance for those who are hurt.” After all, they asserted, “we are, as everybody knows, far better soldiers” than the Bohra Muslims from Goga, who were generally used by the Portuguese on the fleets in the north. “And yet they get far better pay than we get.”43 In the 1740s, partly inspired by the French example, sepoy regiments such as the two mentioned above were brought under the new overall military regiment drawn up by the Viceroy Conde de Ericeira in 1722. This was aimed essentially at bringing the Estado’s European military more in line with that in Portugal. Ericeira’s regiment followed European military statues on matters like marching, aiming, shooting and saluting. Besides Ericeira abolished two longstanding “abuses” in the military, which were typical for the Estado. One was the unclear regulations on promotions: henceforth soldiers were only to be promoted by their sergeant majors, and they were
43
AHU, Índia, Caixa 78, inventarisada, Document 64, “Certidão, March 1733”.
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to be eligible for promotion only if they had served for at least four years. The other change introduced was that the troops were to be permanently quartered in barracks rather than having them live (as was still normal in the beginning of the eighteenth century) in the houses of the fidalgos. Finally, Ericeira also instituted a separate regimental treasury.44 This was followed by a frantic spree of hiring sepoys under the Conde de Alva for his campaigns to conquer Zimbaulim and for his disastrous campaign to reduce the whole of Sunda and the Maratha fortifications there. From a force of a mere 1,800 men (still comparable to the Bombay army!), most of them doing not very demanding work in the fortifications, Alva rapidly expanded the sepoy army to a force of 4,000 men, of whom 500 were the elite Pathan troops. By way of comparison, the entire regular armed strength of the East India Company in 1758 is estimated by Bryant at 4,500 men.45 However, and here was obviously the difference with the British, this was a situation which the Portuguese could not sustain for very long as it created a gaping hole in the entire budget of the Estado da Índia. Conquistas Novas were simply not Bengal.46 This hiring spree attracted military adventurers from the entire neighbourhood to “submit themselves” to become a vassal of His Catholic Majesty. Partly because since the good lawyers of the Estado da Índia were well trained in medieval law at the University of Coimbra, the Portuguese stuck to “feudal” forms in legal documents until deep into the eighteenth century. As an example of such a “term of submission” (as the Portuguese called it) consider the following from 1754. As captain Chandra Parbhu, who is serving in Ponda has represented to me that he wants to come himself with his people to serve this state, I hereby grant licence to the General of Salcete to receive him, he (the general of Salcete) being recommended thereto by the said Chandra Parbhu, and he shall be given licence to enter with his people into our territory. And in the presence of all his sepoys he shall
44 Évora, Códice CXV/1–31, “Regimento militar dado neste Estado pello Senhor Dom Luís de Menezes, Conde de Ericeira”, ff. 1–112; ibid., “Provisão, 19 July 1731”, f. 123. 45 G.J. Bryant, The East India Company and its Army 1600–1778 (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of London), p. 78. 46 AHU, Códice 440, “Lista das contas do V.Rey Conde de Ega monção de 1754”, f. 7.
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make a muster role of them, which shall then publicly be entered into the general muster role of this state.47
Chandra Parbhu was an exceptional man for—as his name indicates—he was a saraswath brahman, rather a-typical of the mainly Maratha recruiters who were enfeofed by the Portuguese in the fifties. The saraswaths were generally a non-military community. But Chandra Parbhu was certainly typical as he was but one of the many freewheeling independent military entrepreneurs-cum-petty landlords, called jamadar or subehdar (from P. jamà'adàr; ßùbadàr) in the Konkan, who recruited from many different communities in the Konkan. And they recruited in the Ghats too. For a very major part of the “traditional” armies in the Konkan, and particularly in the settlements adjacent to the Ghats consisted of tribal Bhils. So it was, for example, with the 25 men in Portuguese service under headmen Naik Savant, “who come from the mountains of Leva”.48 Yet another warband was the company of Fakir Muhammad Khan “raised at his own cost”, which consisted of 32 men.49 Most of his men appear to have been close relatives and in all likelihood they were all from the same fishing village in Candal where Fakir Muhammad Khan and Ibrahim Khan came from. The commanding officers of Fakir Muhammad Khan’s lascar were his brother and his uncle, Azad Khan. Azad Khan “died with most other chiefs—of Ibrahim Khan’s company—when fighting with the Bhonsles in the village of Assolna in the province of Bardes”. If the lascar was very much a family affair this did not mean that the men were any less courageous. Indeed, such close personal ties between a “band of brothers” might endow the soldiers with a fanatical sense of loyalty to their commanding officer and by extension to his “liege”, the king of Portugal. Noronha for one thought that, as they so closely identified with their commander, sepoys were—if led by a competent commander—as good, nay better, soldiers than Portuguese troops.50 Fakir Muhammad Khan asserted in his petition to the Goa administration that he had been faithfully serving His Catholic Majesty 47 BNL, Pombalina, Códice 667, “Governo do Màrques de Alorna”, “Portaria, 30 October 1752”, f. 35. 48 AHU, Índia, Caixa 316, “Memoria da depeza que importara o pagamento das tropas na provinçia de Ponda e Zimbaulim”. 49 I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da Índia, Livro 37, “Carta Patente, 10 September 1758”. 50 BNL, Fundo Geral, 555, “Systema Marcial Ásiatico”, f. 205.
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over the past forty years in combat and garrison duty. And he should therefore be rewarded in the traditional manner: namely by being awarded a pension. Furthermore, as had always been the case before, he should be allotted the right to directly name the officers of his company, whom he would select from his retinue himself. Abd alKhan, leader of a similar ‘band of brothers’, in the same year was also allotted the right to serve as captain for a lascar which “he has raised at his own cost”.51 The total number of the “new” regular sepoy force in service in the Estado da Índia in 1771 consisted of 2,103 men, organised in companies of about 50 men each, with one captain and two sergeants (alferes). Sepoys were paid according to the regiment on pay in 1754. For a lieutenant, it was 14 xeraphins, raised to 20 xeraphins in 1764 monthly, while soldiers were paid 10 xeraphins, raised to 12 in the same year.52 The troops stationed in fortifications mostly had a surgeon attached and in most companies there was also an interpreter. The sepoys appear to have rarely spoken Portuguese, except perhaps by learning some basic commands by root which were given in Portuguese. The normal language in the sepoy force appears to have been Konkani. The sepoys consisted of regular and auxiliary troops. The auxiliary troops were basically the old war-bands of the allied dessàìs in the Konkan, who in return for becoming a vassal of the Estado kept a prerogative to levy a number of sepoys as their retinue. Thus Chandra Parbhu’s company, now stationed at Usgao, was levied annually for a period of three months and received a reduced pay of 8 xeraphins monthly. The same was true for the company of his brother Mala Parbhu. This periodic service during the campaign season reflected an older practice in which the troops would only show up during that season and would go back to their village to sow rice afterwards. The 16th of June was generally seen as the “end of the military season” amongst both the Portuguese and their adversaries in Savantvadi in the beginning of the eighteenth century.53 The “new” sepoy army was an all-season force though.
51 I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da Índia, Livro 37, “Carta Patente, 21 October 1760”. 52 AHU, Índia, Caixa 108, “Carta Regia, 24 April 1764”. 53 I/ANTT, Conselho Geral do Santo Ófficio, Códice 287, “Notiçias da Índia deste anno de 1725 athe 1726” (not paged).
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Most regular troops were also by now neatly uniformed, regimented and garrisoned; the remainder of what originally had been independent war-bands under the leadership of local military entrepreneurs. Some companies were still led by their old commanders. Examples were the original Pathan companies of Shaikh Abd alRahman and Yusuf Khan, the Maratha warband of Sada Shivaji Khamat, or the Koli warband of Ragoji Savant “who (still) serves as chief and jamadar of his own company”.54 The “new” sepoy force in Portuguese service as of 1771 thus clearly exemplified the passing from the ancien régime to the military fiscal state in Portuguese India. Whilst the auxiliary forces still had many of the characteristics of the warbands of the ancien régime, serving for the dry season only and living with their families in military colonies rather than permanently being garrisoned in barracks, the regular troops gradually passed from warbands to regimented forces. In 1756 all troops in the Estado da Índia (the sepoy troops included) were to be divided in numbered regiments and in regular companies. The Indian troops also switched from being clothed in white bertangi, which were generally ordered from Daman, to the green uniforms sent from Portugal.55 Most of the companies, while often keeping the older name of the subehdar whom they once served were gradually allotted to (mostly Indo-Portuguese) commanders. This was for example the case with Ibrahim Khan’s former “boys”: a group of 20 sepoys. Command of this company was given to the Indo-Portuguese soldier João Menezes da Silva in 1758, because Ibrahim Khan had ‘turned rebel’ and fled to Vad.56 But the sepoys did not always easily give up their independent life with their families in their military villages for the barracks; nor did they give up gladly their freedom to choose allegiances nor did they easily submit to European-style military regulations. In 1756, for example, the Conde de Ega thought that the submission of the sepoys to the regimento militar of Ericeira was the main cause behind
54 AHU, Códice 399, “Reforma e estabelicimento do Erario Regio do Estado da Índia”, ff. 109–12. 55 AHU, Índia, Caixa 261, “Real Ordem, 21 March 1756”. 56 I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da Índia, Livro 37, “Provisão, 22 December 1758”.
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the war with Savantvadi in 1754.57 The Savants, Ega argued, had recently instituted reforms in their army, stressing the role of drill, regular formations and heavy rifles with bayonets. So far the Savants’ army had mainly been Bhil light infantry. Those Bhils were skilled in close combat with hand weapons and in ambushes in the impenetrable forests, which covered most of Savantvadi, and they were armed with missile weapons like bows and at best with light “buccaneer-rifles”. A form of warfare in which the Savants had traditionally excelled: the Savants and their Bhil retinue would engage in lightening strikes against the Portuguese infantry after which they disappeared again in the dense forests, where the cumbersome Portuguese heavy infantry could not follow them.58 Yet while this Savant army was able to ambush the Portuguese— as happened with the expedition to Usgao, which was largely slaughtered by the Vadi force in the jungle with a loss of 70 sepoys—such a guerrilla force could not hold ground against the new sepoy Portuguese army.59 To defend themselves against the ever more aggressive Portuguese the Savants had to follow suit. This modernisation of the Savant forces had led to a greater demand for European trained sepoys in Savantvadi. The Savants had doubled their pay for “European” mercenaries and doubled their quest for deserters from Portuguese territory too. This had led to wide unrest among the sepoys quartered in Ponda, who were badly underpaid relative to what they would receive in the army of Savantvadi. This in turn had tempted the “Bhonsle” to invade the territory of Ponda in 1754. For the Savants were expecting aid from the disgruntled Portuguese sepoys, who could still turn to pledging allegiance to the Savants if they thought they were not properly treated by the Portuguese, without in any way considering this as “mutiny”. After all, as we saw, some of their most ranking commanders had deserted too. Not the least of whom was the fore-mentioned Ibrahim
57 AHU, Códice 440, “Lista das contas do V.Rey Conde de Ega monção de 1754”, f. 4v. 58 For a close description of the “jungle-warfare” between Mughal troops and their Portuguese auxiliaries with the Bhil guerilleiros of Khem Savant Bhonsle see in particular the papeis do serviçio of João da Silva de Vasconselhos in AHU, Índia, Caixa 77, Document numbers 18 and 19. 59 Évora, CXX/2–2, “Jose Nunes de Agostinho to the Conde de Unhão, 27 December 1746”.
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Khan, who was both a living legend and a kind of role model for the Portuguese sepoys, and who had been serving the Estado for more than thirty years. Yet he did switch allegiance to the Savants and then to Mysore. Because, De Noronha argued,60 although he was the most senior commander of the Estado he never got any further than the position of captain, the reinois being promoted over his head. Ibrahim Khan had also deserted in disgust because reinol senior commanders simply declined to listen to any advice by “a black fellow”. To the injury of the humdrum military “chicken-shit” was thus added racist insults for both the sepoys and the lascarins; the metropolitan commanders normally referring to them as “black bitches” (cachorros), Ega recorded. Ibrahim Khan was gladly received by Haidar Ali who immediately promoted him to a senior command and gave him twice his former salary. Because of the subdued discontent among the sepoys the Portuguese had reason to fear for more mutinies and entertained a network of informers to spy upon their own troops. Dessai Dulba Naik, “who has always proven to be a faithful servant of the crown of Portugal” was for example to keep a close eye on the mounted company (the Corpo volante) of the sepoys in Candal who—being more mobile and not quartered in fixed barracks—could especially easily flee. He had to immediately report to the headquarters any stirrings among them. Their commanding officers were to read the sepoys’ correspondence, and sepoys quartered in barracks were strictly prohibited to have any intercourse with people from the Deccan. Again, any letter sent to the Deccan had to be read and censored by the lieutenants.61
The sepoy’s pursuit: pay, wives, and land Many sepoys were from long-standing military families with at least an assumed kshatriya-identity and often their whole family had been involved in military pursuits for a long time. Dungara Naik, cabo das sipayes, for example, mariner on a dhow (manchua), and a member of the Hindu ‘middle class’ of Goa at a head-tax for Hindus (the xendi ) assessment of 6 xeraphin, had two brothers living with him in
60 61
BNL, Fundo Geral, “Systema Marcial Ásiatico”, f. 216. AHU, Índia, Caixa 309, “Regimento das tropas de sepoys”.
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his compound. Both of them were serving as village watchmen (naiques). His brothers were xendi-assessed at 4 xeraphin making them very much a part of Goa’s skilled working class. The xendi tax was levied by estimated annual income, where 4 xeraphin was the assessment for craftsmen like shoemakers and smiths. The xendi-lists are—as far as I know—a unique source for eighteenth century India as they were levied by income: Indians are here uniquely divided by “class” rather than caste. However they have two shortcomings. First, the Portuguese were far less concerned about caste than the English were. English muster roles, court records etc. always mention caste as a distinguishing individual characteristic next to the name of an individual (x . . . x . . ., from the caste of . . .). Portuguese records rarely do so. The only way one can guess at the caste status of the sepoys is to look at their names, but this has to be done with caution. Eighteenth century Indians often had a tendency to adopt new names, when they changed their adopted families or when proceeding to a more elevated caste status. And, second, Indians were often named by titles or nicknames, which Europeans often assumed were their proper names. With this note of caution it appears that Portuguese sepoys very often used a single last name, Naique, and typical Maratha first names like Shivaji, Satroji and Shahu. With great reservations I would therefore say that a very major part of the Portuguese sepoys appear to have come from upper-caste Maratha families and that most of them came from the surrounding Maratha and Savant territory. But there are two risks involved in associating the Portuguese sepoys with one caste alone. First, as we have seen already, patronage ties could override and generally did override caste and religious ties. Second, and this is perhaps more important for it is a general problem in Indian studies, an exclusive focus on both “function” and on “caste” may make the researcher blind to individual cases of upward or downward mobility from generation to generation. As we have already seen in the case of Manuel de Sazoa, upward mobility was quite normal under the Indian ancien regime. People might gradually ascend to a kshatrya or Chardo by long service in the army.62
62 I better leave the precise derivation of the word “Chardo” in the middle which has been the topic of a lengthy debate. See P.P.S. Pissurlencar, Contribuição ao estudo etnólogico da casta Indo Portuguese denominade chardó à luz de documentos
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A good case of such upward vertical mobility from the xendi lists is the sepoy sergeant Babhoji, whose father was Babhu Savant, a landless bonded labourer in the rice fields (lavrador begari das varzeas) and by origin a fishermen of Koli status. Babhoji Savant was still living in the compound of his father, which we would imagine as a “squatter” settlement, a group of reed huts in a patch of common forest land on the edge of the rice fields not claimed by any village, but was assessed for xendi at 4 rupees: “upper working class status”. His father was assessed at the very lowest rate for an unskilled bonded labourer of 2 rupees. And that was as close to Goa’s “under-class” as one could get. Even Christian beggars in Goa looked down upon the Hindu lavradores das varzeas.63 Babhoji Savant simply needed the money, however meagre, and above all he needed the food. The population of eighteenth century Goa was certainly no stranger to famine. Because of the minor scarcity (menor carestia) of 1739 and, again, the “excessive price of foodstuff ” in 1758 the ration of soldiers was fixed by the Conselho da fazenda of Goa at three slices of bread (orcas de pão) and one medida of rice per soldier per day, which was by Goan standards a generous ration.64 Pay and food were not the only things enticing such lavradores begaris das varzeas or small fishermen to try to pursue a career in the army. For one thing the army was one of the few relatively open careers left in eighteenth-century Goa, which otherwise witnessed a gradual process of “social exclusion” amongst the Indians themselves. All this to the marked anger of their Portuguese “masters”. More and more offices, and above all more and more land, were exclusively reserved for the Saraswath brahmans, who however were quite averse to a career in the army. For another thing there was scope for sexual gratification. Both Indian armies and Indian warbands were habitually accompanied by bailardeiras which—if the word commonly referred to temple dancers—in this case means little else but
encontrados no Arquivo Histórico do Estado da Índia separata of the Actas do I o Congresso Nacional de Antropologia Cultural (Porto, 1934). 63 Évora, Códice CXV/1–33, “Lista de todos os gentios que são obrigados a pagar a penção de Sendi no anno de 1744”; I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da Índia, Livro 32, “Carta de comutação, 13 March 1755”, f. 77. 64 AHU, Índia, Caixa 314, “Portaria para o accresimento da ajuda de costa”, 6 April 1758.
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camp prostitutes.65 Both because of the risk of venereal disease and, worse, because the bailardeiras were considered to spread the “contagion of paganism”, the sepoys in Ponda were strictly prohibited to entertain bailardeiras in their encampment. Any bailardeira apprehended when trying to visit sepoys was to be heavily fined and in case of “recidivism” to be condemned to forced labour.66 Yet from military life could grow more lasting relations too. One of the major rewards—if not the major reward—of a career in the army for peasant boys might be a wife. In Goa in the eighteenth century (and I have the impression in many other parts of India too) there was an escalation of the dowry-prices, which in Bardes increased from 2,000 to up to 4,000 xeraphins. These were obviously the “upper class” rates for dowries for there was no way a common agricultural worker at a pay of 6 xeraphin a month could even imagine paying such a sum. Yet clearly parents were not very willing to betroth their daughters to poor soldiers “who have nothing on offer but their own body”.67 Hence, the Portuguese crown licensed the probably far older use that the cabos dos sepoys were to endow soldiers willing to marry with a substantial sum of money though— obviously—the crown thought that in that case they should only be married to Catholic girls.68 The most basic way in which the mercenary troops were rewarded was allotting them a piece of land, or allowing them to buy land; it was the normal form of social security in eighteenth century India. As we saw with the Afghan lascar already, the most simple function rice fields fulfilled for the sepoys was as a retirement pension, or they might need the revenues to benefit their family. Ismail Khan, for example, requested to be allotted a “fief ” of the rice field of Venashi in the village of Nerva in Ponda. The income was both needed to feed his three wives and his—he stated also very large— extended family and to serve for his retirement.69 But land was also intimately tied to the political process, in western India at large and in Goa in particular. Possession of land allowed 65
On bailardeiras in the seventeenth century see Barendse, Arabian Seas, p. 97. AHU, Índia Caixa 309, “Bando geral que deve ser publiado de som de instromentos bellicos nas três provinçias de Ponda, Zambaulim e Canocana (1768)”. 67 AHU, Índia, Caixa 84, “Faltas que padeçem este Estado e seus vantajozos remedios (s.d. c. 1730)”. 68 AHU, Índia, Caixa 309, “Regimento das tropas de sepoys”. 69 AHU, Índia, Caixa 204, “Petition, 26 March 1760”. 66
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people to make their own life by participating in the political and economic decision making at the village level. For only the possession of land allowed aspiring lavradores das varzeas a say both in the village assemblies and in the regional assemblies, which existed both in Goa and in Sunda and Savantvadi and were in either case paramount for the division of land and labour. For example, Nana Ksatri and his brothers were by origin Marathas from Bicholim, “sepoys, located in the jurisdiction of the Estado da Índia”. They, “when summoned come with their persons and with their weapons to defend this land” and had in 1720 bought joni land in Bardes from their savings. This joni land gave them a vote in the rural câmara in Bardes. For to those certainly expensive plots of land was tied the status of gavcar, counting for an effective voice of four votes in the câmara of Bardes. This was as clear a case of upward social mobility as any in Goa, for the gavcar position was generally jealously preserved by a tiny clique of a mere fifteen families in Bardes.70 Yet a man like Ibrahim Khan was really aiming much higher than merely obtaining such a joni land. What Ibrahim Khan wanted was to obtain the position of an independent military entrepreneur who service to his lord could obtain hereditary claim on village lands and above all the status associated with the hereditary ownership of the position of a “warden” of a village, the vatan-de≤mukh or sardesai (from Persian wa†an: homeland) rank. There was a dialectical relationship here; land served to underwrite sardesai status, yet to obtain the position of sardesai it was also necessary to feed a retinue and live like a sardesai. The credulity of a desàì above all depended upon largesse and conspicuous spending and that necessitated prodigious amounts of land. “It has now been”, Ramaji Sinay, desàì of Bicholim (who was evicted by the Savants from Bicholim in 1699 and sought refuge in Bardes) complained in 1720 to the Conselho Ultramarino in Lisbon—through his Portuguese attorney—“twenty years that I came under the jurisdiction of your majesty, with my entire family, with all my brahmans, with all my scribes and with all my servants. All of whom serve this state. Yet I never received anything from the Royal Treasury as a reward”. For no land had been set apart in Bardes to allow Ramaji Sinay to feed his retinue, and he therefore complained he had suffered “untold
70
AHU, Índia, Caixa 114, “Petition, 16 March 1720”.
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miseries” (mil miserias). To sustain this clientele Ramaji Sinay demanded he be allotted income from the revenue of the fisheries in the Mandovi.71 Land in the villages was thus tied to having a retinue and the retinue in turn gave men the liberty to freely choose allegiances. Such a freedom to choose allegiances was what gave men the status of a “king” however small their kingdom. When Satroji Raja— whom we have already come across—died his son, Ganesha Bhai Raja, “lord absolute of the villages of Ravana, Nadorna and Parna of Pernem district”, as he titled himself, requested he should obtain not only the revenue of those villages but also the honorary title of “captain of the frontiers” from the Estado da Índia. As “lord absolute” of the those tiny hamlets (for they had only a few hundred inhabitants) he contended that he was entitled to the proper treatment of a malik in a North Indian, that of a vatan-de≤mukh in the Maratha or that of a vatan-sardesai in the Konkani context. The honours bestowed on the legal sardesai by his sovereign were to consist of an annual tribute by the Portuguese to him of two Arabian horses; and he was also to be allowed a retinue of thirty sepoys whom Ganesha Bhai Raja could select as his “house prerogative”. But the authorities at Goa were not enthusiastic about the—they felt highly exaggerated— claims of Ganesha Bhai. They did not think he should be allowed the right to levy sepoys from his villages, or that he should be granted a right to the incomes of the rice fields to pay for the expenses of his warband. For most of the so—called “professional” sepoys in Ganesha Bhai’s retinue were but complete amateurs; peasants and Bhils who had only marched-out with the Portuguese army for one campaign season, enticed by the prospect of plunder. None of them had received any military training whatsoever.72 Ganesha Bhai’s sepoys were somewhat comparable to the auxiliary Pindari forces of the Maratha dominion. Like them they were irregular peasant and in particular Bhil bands, who only brought a horse for the Pindaris, or merely a matchlock, a sword and a shield for the irregular forces in Savantvadi, to the campaigns. They were not paid and were merely rewarded by booty. However, in India
71
AHU, Índia, Caixa 114, “Petition, 6 February 1720”. AHU, Índia, Caixa 101, “Diz Ganeba Rana (s.d., c. 1760)” (Portuguese and Marathi). 72
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very often state formation started with robbery, for such booty was then reinvested by warlords such as Ganesha Bhai in buying ricefields in his patrimonial villages. This effectively entrenched such Maratha or Savant warlords in the villages by becoming a co-sharer within the local village economy, and the local decision making, of the Konkan. Furthermore, as the retinue moved to inhabit his land with him such warbands tended to form permanent military colonies in their new fatherland. The Portuguese had little choice but to follow suit and allow incomes from the villages in various forms of main morte (Ar. in'àm) to the Cabos das cipayes. Take Bapoji Pant, who used to be in charge of the soldiers assisting during the collection of the revenue (the mujamma'dàr) in Ponda, and had helped in the campaign against the Savants “with a group of chosen men.” “If we do not give this (in'àm) to him he will surely retreat to the enemy” the Viceroy thought.73 Another case is that of Arba Naik, chief commander of the Savants, who had switched sides to the Portuguese. Arba Naik requested, and was granted, the right to establish a military settlement in the village of Anjapur in Ponda. The rice-fields in the village were to serve as in'àm land to feed his retinue. The retinue consisted of his brother Vitoba Naik, sardaucar or chief commander of the “regiment of soldiers” tied to Arba Naik’s house, of his subordinate commanders, their family and of their military suite. Arba Naik said it consisted of 15 “houses” with a staggering number of 224 persons in total— not counting women and children. The number in staggering for normally “houses” in eighteenth century Goa generally held no more than 4 to 5 persons. We should not so much imagine a “house” here, then, but more a modern “ward” centred on the “mansion” of the cabo das cipayes with the other soldiers of the company living in the same ward, together with their extensive retinue of personal servants, wives and children. Patronage ties overrode caste ties; for though sardaucar Lakshmi Naik was obviously of upper-caste descent, the other chiefs of the retinue, namely Sura Savant and Butto Savant, where both of low-caste Koli descent.74
73
AHU, Códice 428, “Conde de Ega to Crown, 2 February 1764”, f. 97. BNL, Pombalina, Códice 667, “Tradução da lista que mandou Arba Naique”, f. 77. 74
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In Goa too newly attracted sepoys often lived in such military villages; in newly laid out or levelled palm-groves ( palmares). Works for laying out such Hindu colonies in Goa were often paid by the wealthy Hindu merchants, who then were paid the house rents. Such military colonies were somewhat comparable to those in the Conquistas Novas and, like in the Conquistas Novas, they were partly laid out as Grenzler settlement. They served both to populate and to protect the borders between the Estado and Savantvadi. Such palmares were either located on the land of former common forest ground of the villages, or on land that was turned into swamps after the virtual depopulation of Bardes and Salcete after 1684 and had reverted to empty land, or emphatiotica crown land, status. Typical cases were the palmares (formerly belonging to) João Bento and the palmar of the Dominican Convent, both of which had a high number of sepoys living there. Apart from the large number of sepoys there these were very much settlements of low-caste Hindu fishermen, fishing in the surrounding creeks. In both hamlets these comprised the mass of the population. The sepoys there were part time soldiers, part time fishermen and especially part time boatmen. For particularly in Bicholim fishermen and boatmen often doubled as mariners on the fleet.75 However, when granting in'àm land and establishing military colonies such as Arba Naik’s the Portuguese were obviously but following older Indian usages. Most of this rent-free land was originally given to men like Bapoji Pant by the Mughals or Marathas, “so that he will not retreat to the enemy” too. A Portuguese list of the cabos das cipayes who were allowed various forms of in'àm land to feed their military retinue and who mostly were concentrated in such separate military settlements thus constituted a veritable “archaeology” of the turbulent history of Ponda over the last hundred years or so.76 Cabo Shaikh Murtuza and cabo Shaikh Ismail with a military retinue of 79 men may, for example, be conceived of as descendants of Mughal sergeants who had established military settlements in Ponda in the 1690’s. Mahadaji Scindia,
75 Évora, CXV/1–33, “Lista de todos os gentios”; Bibliotheca Pública da Ajuda, Lisbon, Códice 51–VII-28, “Relação sumaria dos principais succesos de Goa com a guerra de Marata”, f. 14. 76 AHU, Índia, Caixa 316, “Memoria da depeza que importara o pagamento das tropas e outras na provincia de Ponda e Zambaulim”.
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Jagdish Patvardan and Mahadaji Malik dessay de Caranja were obviously Marathas who had pitched tents there somewhere in the 1730’s; they mustered 34 men between them. And finally the “sovereignties” of sardesai Rama Naik and of sardesai Pulamar Naik, with 24 men between them, were the remnants of far older Bhil chiefdoms, who were intersected between the “settled” populations of Ponda, where most forests were still the realm of the Bhils. There was thus in Ponda and Zimbaulim a realm of “private” taxation underlying the taxation of the realm and the military was by and large paid through such private taxation. For example, in 1765 the total revenue of the two districts was valued by the Portuguese at 193,476 xeraphin.77 This included the main agricultural revenue (the jama' ) which rate—as elsewhere in the Maratha dominion—was thought to have been fixed once and forever during Adilshah’s reign over Ponda in mutual agreement between the Adilshah’s ˙awàldàrs and the sardesais of Ponda. In Savantvadi as much as in the kingdom of Sunda the villagers stressed—when in 1766 queried in exhaustive detail by a Portuguese judge, José de Mendonça Benvenido, in a general devassa on the system of revenue in use before 1762—the revenue was “only directly levied by officials of the royal treasury” ( por conte da fazenda real) in time of dire financial necessity. In normal circumstances the officials of Sunda and Savantvad had arrangements with the villages that they were to deliver a fixed and customary sum, part of which was to be levied by the sardesais.78 Since the customary jama‘ was fixed what gave the revenue its real flexibility were first the dreaded cesses (called baj va bab in the Konkan) imposed by the Marathas in the 1740’s. These were supplementary impositions on the mining or selling of iron and—a major income for the state in densely forested Zimbaulim—impositions in cash on the peasants for permissions to cut wood in the forests. Second, and more importantly, beyond that a long series of posts were subtracted from the revenue. This basically meant that rice-fields were fictionally supposed to be subjected to the state revenue but were in fact set aside to cover the direct expenses of servants of the state. And above
77 AHU, Índia, Caixa 320, “Mappa dos rendimentos das provinçias de Ponda e de Zimbaulim de hum anno de Julho de 1764 athe Junho 1765”. 78 AHU, Índia, Caixa 266, “O ouvidor Henriques Jose de Mendonça Pereira tirasse parecer, 4 October 1766”.
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all, that they were used to accommodate older elites (whose position of power preceded the re-imposition of the Savant’s rule over Ponda in 1702) within the Savant sovereignty. The crown of Savantvadi was “hollow”. Savant sovereignty was pigeon-holed by that of a myriad small sovereignties, who were strictly speaking outside of the Savant’s jurisdiction, be those “sovereignties” only over two or three rice-fields.79 These consisted first of the incomes of the Hindu priests serving the temple at Nagua, covered through the incomes from the village of Quelni—those incomes very likely already dating back to the Vijayanagara period in the fourteenth century. It also consisted of waqf-lands reserved for the qà∂ì Ponda whose daily expenses were paid from the incomes of two rice fields in two different villages in Ponda—those incomes probably dating back to either Adilshahi rule or to the short Mughal interregnum. But the main incomes subtracted from the revenue were those of the sardesai Dulba Naik who for his support to the Portuguese had been bestowed the revenue of the village of Vadri apart from various pieces of land in Zimbaulim, already in his possession since at least 1700. And those of the sardesai of Ponda, Ragoji Savant, which took a major chunk off the revenue at 18,206 xeraphins. This was his due because the latter “has a large number of dessàìs under him, who also serve under him in times of war”.80 Yet being “king” of a mere three hamlets with maybe 2,000 inhabitants, where additionally Satroji Raja derived those claims on kingship not from the “court” of nearby Vad but from the very distant court at Pune, is not really what we normally would associate with a kingdom at all. This, I feel, is the problem of much recent literature emphasising the centrality of kingship in India—in which power always flows from the Raja—for what is the sense of speaking of a “kingdom” which merely consists of three hamlets? Rather than reflecting any reality of power, flowing from the Raja, much of the language of absolute kingship and sovereignty (whether it involved the pàdshàh in Delhi, or in this case the chatrapati at Satara) was in
79 N.B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown; Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Ann Arbor, 1993). 80 AHU, Índia, Caixa 86, “Memoria dos dessays que servem o Estado e que he indispensavel à sua conservação (s.d., c. 1780)”.
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the reality of the eighteenth century, I feel, a kind of lucky bag from which successful military entrepreneurs could grab a few words and claims to legitimise their claims on land they would ultimately have seized by force. And in that respect most of the cabo das cipayes and the sardesais perceived “being a servant of His Catholic Majesty” as but little different from being a servant of the Peshwa or the Mughal. Submitting to the Portuguese gave them yet another set of concepts by which they could legitimise their claims on land.
Conclusion: modernity in disguise All this was in itself surely hardly new; to tear the kingdoms of potentially dangerous enemies apart by supporting claims of rivals who had “submitted themselves to His Catholic Majesty” had been a common Portuguese tactic in the Konkan since at least 1558. The Portuguese then had supported Ibrahim Adil Shah Qazi, pretender to the Adilshahi throne, whose son—as being king by divine right, vassal of His Catholic Majesty—under the title Alexes de Menezes ascended to the unlikely position of a fidalgo in Goa.81 And there are also sundry cases from the seventeenth century where the desàìs submitted themselves to His Catholic Majesty, bringing their full retinue along, much like the above mentioned cases.82 What was new, though, and in this respect I think the—mainly western—historians arguing for a basic continuity between the precolonial and the colonial period are wrong is that although the institutional forms in the transition between the ancien régime and the military fiscal state were still very close to those of the ancien régime, the actual content was often very different. The problem, I think, is that often writings on the ancien régime basically take as typical for the ancien régime the situation prevailing, say, twenty years before the colonial conquest. This may not only ignore previous European penetration before the conquest itself, but also the extent to which European actions merely appear to be ancien régime because they were trying to gain legitimacy through couching them in that language. 81 Diego do Couto, Da Ásia. Dos Feitos que os Portugueses fizeram na conquista e descobrimento das terras e mares do Oriente. 25 volumes (first edition Lisbon, 1780), Década VII, Livro 1. 82 Barendse, Arabian Seas, pp. 144.
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There is a risk then of mistaking practices which were actually quite new as typical of the ancien régime. Let us return to the case of Vicente de Vidal’s expedition against Uspa: we saw that in many ways all this looks very much like traditional Mughal warfare and in many respects it certainly was. In the seventeenth century too it was normal for the Portuguese to take cattle along in frontier raiding, or to raid frontier territory in the nominal position of a Maratha or Mughal ally. Yet there were two critical differences between the truly ancien régime seventeenth century and the only seemingly ancien régime in the eighteenth. The first is that those raids were to be financed through permanently assigning the incomes of villages in Bicholim to the invading army, something I never witnessed in the seventeenth century. The secret the English, the Portuguese and the French found out somewhere in the 1730’s was that by having their own army paid via “subsidiary alliances” with Indian states they could quite literally “externalise protection costs”. If the army was to be paid by their neighbours and yet their officers were still permitted to take along the spoils of the campaigns, with the Company or the Portuguese state also garnering a handsome share of this official prize-money, then warfare became a very profitable and very enticing proposition indeed. The second and—I think the most critical difference—is the taking of hostages, which was not done in the seventeenth century at all. The Marathas also widely resorted to the taking of hostages, the prime aim of which was to secure ransom. However they had another aim too when taking hostages. As happened in Chaul where the English thought that “the enemy” had been “possessing themselves of the wives and children of the garrison” and “by threatening to cut them down they forced them to surrender”.83 Ragunat Pant and Zabardast Khan had thus little choice but to surrender as, for all they knew, the Portuguese might well kill their wives and children if they did not. The point is rather critical: “collaborating” at gunpoint for lack of any other option is not really collaborating at all. “Collaboration” thus almost imperceptibly transcended into subordination in the eighteenth century.
83
OIOC, P/341/13, Bombay Public Consultations, 3 August 1743, f. 342.
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THE TRIALS OF CAPTAIN HACKERT AND ENGINEER ANDRIES LESLORANT AT THE MALABAR COUNCIL OF WAR Mark de Lannoy
Introduction At the end of September 1739 the Dutch, with the help of their allies the kings of Cochin and Kayamkulam, started a war against Martanda Varma, king of Travancore.1 Both the Dutch and their allies had their own reasons for this. The Dutch wanted to force the Travancore king to keep to the contract that they had concluded with his predecessor, the prince of Kottayam in 1691. The kings of Kayamkulam and Cochin had dynastic and territorial reasons to fight their neighbour.2 The Dutch thought that they could easily defeat the Travancore army which mainly consisted of untrained, poorly equipped soldiers, unfamiliar with European war tactics. This in spite of the fact that the Dutch themselves had to cope with a highly incompetent military command and with very unreliable allies. The incompetence, for example, led to the building of several weakly built forts. One of these forts was Colachel, a small harbour which could, the Dutch thought, be easily provided with food and ammunition in case of a siege, which they thought highly improbable.3 With the arrival of the monsoon, the Dutch immediately withdrew to their forts, both in the interior and on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The forts in the interior, however, were captured by the enemy so that finally the Dutch were forced to withdraw to Colachel which was soon besieged from three sides. This fortress was mainly constructed of mud so that the walls could hardly hold the heavy Dutch 1 M. de Lannoy: The Kulasekhara Perumals of Travancore. History and State Formation in Travancore from 1671 to 1758 (Leiden, 1997), p. 76. 2 Ibid., p. 15 and J.E. Heeres and F.W. Stapel (eds.), Corpus Diplomaticum NeerlandoIndicum; Verzameling van politieke contracten en verdere verdragen door de Nederlanders in het Oosten gesloten, van privilegebrieven aan hen verleend etc. (The Hague, 1907–1955), Vol. III, pp. 563–8. 3 De Lannoy: Kulasekhara Perumals, p. 91.
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artillery.4 To make things worse, the Dutch even failed to lock the gate since the key had been sold by a corrupt VOC servant to the French! Crowded by refugees, Captain Hackert, the commander of the Dutch forces, considered the situation desperate and decided, without orders of his superior Julius Valentijn Stein van Gollenesse, the Commandeur of the Malabar Coast, to leave Colachel for Tuticorin. Obviously this made the situation of the Dutch who stayed behind even more desperate, especially after the Travancoreans succeeded in blowing up the entire stock of gunpowder. The Colachel commander Rijtel requested help, and when Stein van Gollenesse discovered that Hackert had withdrawn from the fortress he ordered him to return.5 For the Dutch at Colachel it was already too late. Those who survived the siege capitulated and were forced to enter into the service of the Travancore king. Reinicus Siersma,6 the successor of Stein van Gollenesse, described the loss of Colachel thus: After the provisions were destroyed by fire, the rest of the Colachel garrison, partly by persuasion of the Travancore king, partly by hunger, surrendered to the enemy. Now this king is served by approximately 300 or 400 Dutch soldiers which was mainly caused by Hackert who had gone to Tuticorin instead of Cochin. Therefore we were not able to send immediate reinforcements to Colachel.7
Hackert again withdrew to Quilon where his superior Stein van Gollenesse ordered an investigation of his conduct which finally resulted in the trial of Captain Hackert before the Quilon Council of War. Hackert, however, was not the only person whose conduct during the Travancore war was investigated. Engineer Andries Leslorant, who was responsible for the fortification of Colachel, was also summoned to the Council. 4
Idem, p. 92. Nationaal Archief The Hague (NA), VOC 2543, “Cochin Council to Batavia, 26 October 1741”, ff. 4077–8. 6 Reinicus Siersma, born in Leeuwarden, died in Batavia, okt. 1757. In 1723 he arrived as Sergeant in the Indies with the ship Castricum for the Chamber of Amsterdam. On 12 Sept. 1723 Lieutenant-Captain of Malabar; 14 August 1733 Captain; 1 March 1740 Captain-Commander of Porto-Novo; 28 Dec. 1741 SergeantMajor of the Batavia castle; from 27 August 1742 until 1748 Commander of Malabar; 3 Oct. 1752 to 29 Dec. 1754 Governor and Director on Banda; 16 Dec. 1755 Receiver-General and on 18 June 1756 Captain of the pennisten corps (Wijnaendts van Resandt: De gezaghebbers, pp. 190–1). 7 NA, VOC 2653, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 6 January 1745”, ff. 85–6. 5
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The prosecution of Hackert In September 1740, directly after the hostilities with Travancore started, Stein van Gollenesse established a Council of War. Interestingly, its president was Joannes Hackert who, only one year later, was to be prosecuted himself by the same Council. The Council was to deal with all cases, both military and criminal during the war against Travancore. According to Schmitz such Councils of War existed also in other VOC establishments.8 There was no strict division between administrative and juridical powers. In fact, all VOC establishments, except Batavia, lacked professional lawyers and judges. This influenced the administration of justice significantly.9 Malabar was no exception, for the investigation against Hackert was started by the Fiscaal and opperkoopman Hendrik Wendelin Koller on 12 October 1741.10 A crucial point in the investigation against Hackert was that two members of the Council of War had refused to sign a resolution in which it was stated that it was impossible to relieve Colachel. One of them was the prosecutor Koller. He had voted against the resolution proposed by the former President of the Council of War, his superior, Hackert. This was probably the reason why Hackert refused to give his papers to Koller. Hackert also refused to be judged on the Malabar Coast. He requested to be suspended from all his local functions in order to be able to appear in court at Colombo or Batavia. He claimed that being an officer commissioned at Colombo he could only be judged by a Council of War in Ceylon. But Stein van Gollenesse argued that he had made Hackert his Secunde (second-in-command) of Malabar and that he therefore had to be tried on this Coast.11 For the time being his request was refused and Hackert had to await the investigations by the local Council. Hackert, however, persisted in his refusal to hand over his papers to Koller. He said that since Stein van Gollenesse himself had left 8
Schmitz mentions i.e. Java’s Northeast Coast in 1741 ( J.P.G. Schmitz: Rechtshistorische bijdragen tot de kennis van het materieele en formeele strafrecht van toepassing op de dienaren van de Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, voornamelijk betrekking hebbende op het delict van desertie (Utrecht, 1938), p. 73). 9 J. van Kan: Uit de rechtsgeschiedenis der Campagnie, tweede bundel. Rechtsgeleerd bedrijf in de buitencomptoiren (Bandung, 1935), p. 3. 10 Ibid., 150–6. In the eighteenth century juridical administration in Cochin was carried out with the help of a Rechtsboekje, a compendium of laws, ill composed by an amateur for daily use in court. 11 NA, VOC 2581, “Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 21 December 1741”, ff. 6039–41.
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the theatre of war at such an early stage, he could not be blamed for neglecting his duty ( pligtsversuijm en wandevoir).12 He also claimed that he could not be accused because there was no formal complaint. Thus Hackert delayed the investigation against him until Stein van Gollenesse arrived at Quilon on 25 December 1741. For Stein van Gollenesse Hackert was the main cause of the failure of the Travancore war. Apart from being responsible for the fall of Colachel, Hackert, as chief of the police, always had acted “in a most despotic way”.13 On 31 December 1741 Hackert made a request to be allowed to leave the Malabar Coast but this was not granted. Thereupon Hackert demanded copies of the complaints against him for his own defence.14 Hackert refused to answer the questions of Koller until he had those copies. He even claimed that now he was in the power of Stein van Gollenesse the latter could do with him just as he pleased. Thereupon Stein van Gollenesse retorted that: These words were just in case that they sprang from the mouth of an innocent man who was dishonestly accused by his superiors. But they were irrelevant from the mouth of the Hon. Hackert.
On 11 January 1742 Hackert was officially charged. In the official accusation (declaratoir clagtschrift) Hackert was accused by his former subordinates of various serious offences such as: 1. withdrawal from Colachel without permission of Stein van Gollenesse, 2. failure to end the siege of Colachel by the Travancoreans which resulted in the fall of this fortress, 3. lack of control of the building process of Colachel. The same day, Hackert repeated his request to be sent to Batavia in order to be tried there. But this request was again refused on the ground that the complaints against him had to be investigated first.15
12 NA, VOC 2581, “Letter of captain Johannes Hackert to Batavia, 23 December 1741”, ff. 7807. 13 NA, VOC 2561, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 21 March 1742”, f. 144r. 14 NA, VOC 2581, “Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 5 January 1742”, ff. 6065–6. 15 NA, VOC 2561, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 21 March 1742”, f. 143r.
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Meanwhile, Hackert still refused to hand over his papers to the Council of War. He had locked them in his room and claimed that he needed them for his own defence. He even lodged a complaint against Koller, who was prosecuting him as if he had committed a criminal act. Apparently the Council of War was not amused by the uncooperative behaviour of Hackert who did not shrink from abusing and threatening those people who under oath accused him of various things.16 Hackert claimed that the Secretary of the Council did not dare to write things that displeased Stein van Gollenesse. This provoked Stein van Gollenesse in writing to Batavia: These are hard words for I acted never as an arbitrary and despotic commander. I have never done any wrong to this man. Yet, on the contrary I have treated him most gently in spite of his most irritating behaviour.17
On 14 March 1742 Hackert was dishonourably discharged from all his functions.18 Hence, he lost his military honours and salary and was practically considered guilty before the trial had properly started. In the meantime, Stein van Gollenesse added a new accusation by claiming that Hackert had withheld information from his superiors about the course of the war. But according to Hackert he was forced to withdraw to Tuticorin because of the deteriorating weather. The relief of Colachel had failed because there was a lack of oxen, coolies and provisions. Besides, Hackert argued that it was dangerous to send detailed reports of the Dutch military operations because they could easily be intercepted by the enemy.19 Several days later Hackert wrote in despair to Batavia that: I am exposed to the most vehement prosecution of the commander which has gone so far that all those who can accuse me of the most dishonest and bad things are treated by the commander (Stein van Gollenesse) in the most gentle and friendly way. 16 NA, VOC 2561, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 21 March 1742”, f. 143v. The Dutch text is written in very prosaic terms which I will not withhold from the reader: Dat de E. Hackert niet terugdeinsde alle degeene die in sijne presentie ter requisitie van den fiscael hare verklaringen off interrogatoiren moeten b’eedigen lelijk uit te schelden en te vermaledije. 17 NA, VOC 2561, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 21 March 1742”, f. 145r. 18 NA, VOC 2581, “Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 14 March 1742”, ff. 6205–7. 19 NA, VOC 2543, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 25 August 1741”, ff. 4041–2.
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According to Hackert, the accusations against him consisted not only of slander and insults but also of hearsay. Some witnesses even received free meals and lodging in the house of the prosecutor Koller who offered his guests all comfort and friendliness, so that he had collected an enormous amount of complaints. For Hackert and his few remaining friends, it was unbelievable how many complaints were forwarded against him, which gave the impression that he had committed in a few months innumerable misdeeds. As a result, nobody dared to defend him before the Council of War.20 All these written appeals to Batavia were of no avail. The process continued. On 27 March 1742, Hackert had finally handed over his papers to the Council of War. He now wanted to send a complaint against Stein van Gollenesse to the High Council in Batavia but this was forbidden by the latter. If he wanted to complain about his superior he could do so in the Malabar court. Not surprisingly, Stein van Gollenesse held the view that the orders of the High Council had to be respected strictly. Therefore there had to be made no exception on this rule for the sake of one capricious servant whose incapability and refractory behaviour were well-known. The Council of War had tried to change Hackert’s attitude, but in vain. Instead, the Council of War reported in a resolution of the same day that the accused “answered our kind and polite admonitions in a highly brutal and arrogant manner”.21 Hackert argued that if he was incapable, then this was also true for his superior Stein van Gollenesse and his prosecutor Koller, who in his accusation, as he sarcastically said, had omitted the heavy costs the Hon. Company made when the VOC ships left Colachel for Tuticorin.22 This omission however, was swiftly restored by Koller who added to the accusation an account of the costs of 37,589 guilders and 60 cents.23 Despite the fact that he was forbidden to write directly to the High Council in Batavia, Hackert continued to bitterly complain
20 NA, VOC 2577, “Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 19 March 1742”, ff. 134–5. 21 NA, VOC 2581, “Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 27 March 1742”, ff. 6220–1. 22 NA, VOC 2581, “Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 1 April 1742, ff. 6231–2. 23 NA, VOC 2577, “Resolution of the Cochin Police Council, 14 May 1742”, ff. 239–40.
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about his prosecution to the Governor-General Thedens.24 Hackert wrote to Thedens that his prosecutor had given a false view on the things that happened during the Travancore war. This was the more astounding for the prosecutor himself was part of the Council of War during the Travancore expedition. This meant that he had also agreed with the decisions which were taken at that time. The prosecutor had compiled a large volume of accusations (een groot volium declaratoire clagtschrift). When it was handed over to the Council of War Hackert asserted that it contained “enormous lies and false accusations in the most scoffing mockery with many scornful expressions”.25 Interesting in this process was that Hackert wrote to the High Council in Batavia that the prosecutor used the statements of “those scoundrels who had run away”. In other words, the prosecutor used statements of deserters who were now serving the Travancore king. Hackert also claimed that Stein van Gollenesse had left the battlefield on purpose, feigning that he was ill. In fact, according to Hackert, Stein van Gollenesse had gone back to Cochin to anticipate defeat and to use Hackert as a scapegoat. Hence Stein van Gollenesse used the trial to prove his clean hands. In this he was fully supported by Koller, the prosecutor, who, in the words of Hackert, was “a slave of the Hon. Commander because he was totally dependent on him for promotion”. As everybody knew, the prosecutor could not subsist without the support of the Commandeur since the former had borrowed large sums of money from the latter. If the prosecutor acted contrary to the wishes of the Commandeur he received no money from him anymore. According to Hackert, all this explained the vehement prosecution Hackert was subjected to.26 Hackert was not the only person who had an unfavourable view of Koller. The successor of Stein van Gollenesse, Siersma, described Koller in the following picturesque words:
24 Johannes Thedens (died 1748) Governor-General of the Netherlands Indies from 1741 until 1743 (W. Wijnaendts van Resandt: De gezaghebbers der Oost-Indische Compagnie op hare buiten-comptoiren in Azië (Amsterdam, 1944), p. 158). 25 This accusation or “declaratoir clagtschrift” has dissappeared from the archives of the VOC. It is neither in the documents of the Chamber Amsterdam, nor in that of Zeeland. It is however remarkable that the table of contents is still preserved (NA, VOC 2581, “Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 30 April 1742”, ff. 7783–9). 26 NA, VOC 2581, “Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 30 April 1742”, f. 7798.
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The said Koller is a lickspite (likkebroer) who most of the time stays at home. This happens especially in times of increasing work at the secretariat. Koller pretends then that he has pain on his breast and other indefinite complaints. Therefore the commander himself has to do the major part of the administrative work. He is therefore not only commander but also his own secretary.
Adding about the Koller family: “His wife and mother-in-law are the most stupid and obstinate papal viragos on this coast.”27 Hackert again requested that the Governor-General send him a decent and capable person who was willing to defend him in court. He remarked in this letter that if he was sentenced this would also affect the complete Council of War over which he had presided during the Travancore war. In the meantime the compilation of the accusation was continued. It already filled a quarter ream of paper. Therefore Hackert wrote to Batavia that it seemed as if his whole life was a sequence of enormous excesses which had to be written down in the largest volumes.28 After Hackert was discharged from all his functions he could not support himself anymore. A request for overdue payment was refused. Moreover, Hackert thought that it was unfair that he had to pay for copies of the accusations against him. Hackert described his judges in the most unflattering way, accusing them of improper conduct and debaucheries: After the well-known drunkard captain Jan Dirk van der Bruggen had given under oath his false statement he came to me and shouted: “Now I hope I can take revenge!” Van der Bruggen and all the others received an extremely friendly treatment from the Commandeur (Stein van Gollenesse). Yes, they were even promoted in rank and salary.29
Hackert persisted in his wish to be judged in Batavia which was again refused by Stein van Gollenesse since, as he wrote to Batavia: “This will cause unnecessary delay which is only caused by the mysterious and ill-founded request of the said Hackert.”30 Probably, Stein 27 NA, VOC 2678, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 28 February 1746”, ff. 193–4. 28 NA, VOC 2581, “Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 30 April 1742”, f. 7790. 29 NA, VOC 2577, “Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 19 March 1742”, ff. 136–8. 30 NA, VOC 2561, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 14 March 1742”, f. 184r.
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van Gollenesse also knew very well that Hackert being at Batavia, would not at all improve his own career prospects. At the same time, though, without proper investigations Koller was not able to formulate a formal complaint against Hackert. On 28 May 1742 he asked to be discharged from his function and soon thereafter he left with his family for Colombo. Somewhat later, Stein van Gollenesse was promoted Governor of Ceylon in July 1742.31 By then Hackert was no longer a serious threat for the career of Stein van Gollenesse and was sent to Batavia on 31 December 1742.32
The prosecution of Leslorant Hackert was not the only one who appeared before the Council of War. Koller also started to investigate the role of Andries Leslorant. The latter had slandered both Stein van Gollenesse and Koller. The accused, however, refused to appear in court and answered the summons with renewed insults and affronts.33 Finally he was forced to appear in court where he was also charged with accusations of (1) corruption and (2) neglect and misconduct. The Colachel fortress was built under the supervision of Leslorant. This had been considerably delayed because of lacking buildingmaterials. This was somewhat curious since Cochin Fort had sent large supplies of stones and wood. But the mystery was cleared in court when Leslorant was accused of corruption: he had sold the building-materials to his former employers the French at Mahé.34 On 31 march 1741, already, Stein van Gollenesse had recorded the misconduct of the military-engineer Leslorant, whereupon the latter had asked for his dismissal.35 A complaint of Leslorant against the chief-surgeon Martin Sart was also investigated by the Council. In a quarrel with Leslorant, Sart had shouted at the former that he
31
He started in his new function in May 1743. NA, VOC 2609, “Letter of Stein van Gollenesse and Siersma to Batavia, 31 December 1742”, f. 146. 33 NA, VOC 2577, “Resolution of the Cochin Police Council, 12 October 1741”, ff. 707–8. 34 NA, VOC 2577, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 14 May 1742”, ff. 237–9. 35 NA, VOC 2581, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 2 May 1741”, ff. 7565–6. 32
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was a scamp. This quarrel started when Leslorant complained about the noise Sart made in the middle of the night. According to Sart, Leslorant then started to shout all kinds of insults at him. Hackert had said to Sart that it was improper to call his superior Leslorant a scamp. Consequently Hackert forbade Sart to take his brawling and drinking friends into his lodge.36 Leslorant himself was reproached for living in great debauchery. He had slandered the honour and reputation of the Commandeur. This fact was proved by two witnesses: Koller and Van der Bruggen. Leslorant denied these imputations and called Koller a perfidious person. Apart from these charges, it was revealed that Leslorant had received a double salary during the last three years, one form Cochin and one from Tuticorin. In fact, he had misused an ill-kept administration and now declared that his pay was in arrears.37 These accusations of incapability, corruption and defamation were enough to discharge him from his functions.38 Soon after, in May 1742, Leslorant and his papers were sent with the ship Woutkensdorp to Ceylon where he was imprisoned until further notice.39
Conclusion The lack of professionalism of the Council of War was clearly shown in the trials of Hackert and Leslorant. Hackert, the former President of the Council, was tried by his former subordinates who saw this process as a means to convey their frustrations caused by the lost war against Travancore. Stein van Gollenesse had good reasons to fear that his promotion of becoming the new Governor of Ceylon would be endangered when Hackert was sent to Batavia. Therefore Hackert could leave the Malabar Coast only after Stein van Gollenesse
36
NA, VOC 2581, “Resolution of the Kanniyakumari Council of War, 9 September 1741”, ff. 7465–6. 37 NA, VOC 2577, “Resolution of the Cochin Police Council, 26 October 1741”, ff. 753–4. 38 Actually Stein van Gollenesse had contemplated this measure much earlier but had abstained from doing so, afraid of further delaying the building of Colachel (NA, VOC 2577, “Resolution of the Cochin Police Council, 12 October 1741”, ff. 705–6). 39 NA, VOC 2561, “Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 14 May 1742”, ff. 183v–184r.
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was promoted Governor of Ceylon. As the Leslorant case was much less relevant for the personal ambitions of Stein van Gollenesse, the first was sent without any further delay to the Colombo court. Clearly, in all this, the administration of justice could only but serve the requirements of extensive networks of patronage, both within and— as revealed in the deserters’ testimonies against Hackert—beyond the Company’s ranks. Moreover, by emphasizing the misconduct and disloyalty of VOC servants, judicial cases like the ones against Hackert and Leslorant, vividly reveal a most fascinating, highly personalised shadow Company hidden behind the façade of the usual official correspondence.
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BEDARA REVISITED: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE DUTCH EXPEDITION OF 1759 TO BENGAL Hugo s’Jacob
Nothing would withhold us to repatriate, had it not been that we have been very unlucky in our trade, so that we are forced to stay in these quarters.1
Thus Amalia Falck complained to her brother Jan Warnar Falck, who served the Dutch East India Company (VOC) at Surat. Her husband, Adriaan Bisdom, had been passed over recently as Director of the establishment of the Company in Bengal.2 Therefore the couple had to stay some more months at the subordinate factory at Kasimbazar. Fortunately, in October 1755 Adriaan Bisdom was appointed Director. He was an old-hand in Bengal. His career had started in Kasimbazar in 1740. From 1742 to 1751 he served at Chinsura, then returned again to Kasimbazar.3 Indeed, Bisdom had had ample opportunity to enter legal, and perhaps illegal private, trade in Bengal. At the end of his career his private transfers to Europe and investments in English stocks administered by the Bank of England had a value of 35.46 times his total earnings within the VOC.4 So one thing is sure, when Bisdom repatriated to Holland he was a very wealthy man. The Bengal government served by Bisdom comprised factories as far apart as Dhaka in present-day Bangladesh and Patna in Bihar,
1 Nationaal Archief, The Hague (NA), Collectie Aanwinsten 838: “Amalia Constantia Bisdom, néé Falck, to her brother Jan Warnar Falck”, Kasimbazar 10–1–1755. 2 Ibid. 3 W. Wijnaendts van Resandt, De gezaghebbers der Oost-Indische Compagnie op hare buiten-comptoiren in Azië (Amsterdam, 1944), p. 45. 4 Bisdom’s case is exceptional, since only thirteen of the 115 members of the Council of Bengal in the eighteenth century invested an average of only 2.3 times their total earnings of their career within the VOC in English stocks. As such this is a remarkable figure indeed. However, it is based on an odd 10% of the total earnings of 115 members of the Council (F. Lequin, Het personeel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Azië in de achttiende eeuw, meer in het bijzonder in de vestiging Bengalen (Leiden, 1982), I, p. 155; II, pp. 437, 546. Information on earnings in appendix 10, pp. 543–62).
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a distance of approximately 575 km as the crow flies. The headoffice was situated in Chinsura on the right bank of the river Hooghly, from where it took on average 15 days to travel to Dhaka and 24 days to Patna. Ships arriving by the Bay of Bengal had to be piloted upstream for two days through many banks and dangerous passages. On the way they passed Fort William of the English East India Company (EIC) at Calcutta, the Danish factory at Serampore and the French factory at Chandernagore. It was a voyage with many opportunities for both courtesy and (private) business calls. An odd 27 km south of Chinsura the Dutch owned the village of Barnagul, where weavers worked in a safe-haven during troublesome times, and where ladies of pleasure could be visited. The ships with deep draughts would have to moor here, and, if the current was strong, all other ships too. Finally, the church of Chinsura and the lofty ghats would appear. Here the members of the Council supervised the unloading of private goods brought by friends aboard. For most of the new arrivals who would stay in Bengal, the voyage had ended. They would add up to an average of 253 servants of the Company. Some had to travel further on, may be to the lodge at Kasimbazar, circa 150 km upstream near the capital of Murshidabad, or still farther to Patna, 480 km from Chinsura. These were small establishments with respectively only 25 and 20 employees.5 For the VOC the Bengal factories were very important indeed. As we know from the studies of Om Prakash, during the eighteenth century the Dutch factories at Bengal, although losing some ground in the Company’s intra-Asian trade, became very prominent as suppliers of goods for the European market.6 Bengal’s growing exports made the authorities in both Batavia and The Netherlands increasingly eager to keep a close watch on the region. For another reason, too, the Batavia Council may have been inclined to watch trade in Bengal attentively. It produced opium, which was sold via Batavia on Java and gradually to other parts of the Archipelago too. In 1677 the Company obtained a monopoly on the sale of opium in Mataram, in 1678 in Palembang on Sumatra, and finally in 1681 in Cheribon on Java. Although all opium had to pass the market of Batavia, where it was sold by auction, it was
5 6
Lequin, Het personeel, pp. 102–8. Om Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-colonial India (Cambridge, 1998).
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very tempting, even for the members of the Council themselves, to bypass these auctions.7 Meanwhile, the opium trade between Bengal and Batavia grew steadily. In the 1680s the proceeds of the sales at Batavia were f 140,000, while in 1679 the rate of gross profit amounted to 400%. In 1730/32 the annual export from Bengal by the VOC had a value of f 470,900 Indian light money with on average a turnover of 140,000 pounds. In 1751/53 these figures had risen to f 718,900 and 200,000 pounds respectively. In the first half of the eighteenth century Bengal opium made up for approximately 15% of the total VOC-income at Batavia.8 From 1745 onwards, opium imports into Batavia were marketed through an Opium Society, a private consortium consisting of shareholders, which in return for the Company’s monopoly had to buy a minimum amount of opium against a fixed price. Hence in return for guaranteed sales, the VOC offered the Society prospects of huge profits; profits that were to replace the income from smuggling.9 Among the biggest investors in the Society we find Governor-General Van Imhoff and his Director-General and later successor Jacob Mossel.10 All this explains the High Government’s deep concerns with the political developments in Bengal.
Changing political conditions in Bengal In his so-called memorandum of transfer to Bisdom in 1755, the Company’s Director in Bengal Taillefert was very negative about the political conditions. The servants of the Company commonly attributed bad results in trade to the regional authorities involved, arguing they were unable to guarantee law and order. This was an easy way to distract attention from their commercial performance. However, Taillefert may have had reason to complain. From 1742 to 1751
7 Om Prakash, “Opium Monopoly in India and Indonesia in the Eighteenth Century”, Itinerario, 12 (1988), p. 83. 8 E.M. Jacobs, Koopman in Azië. De handel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tijdens de 18 de eeuw (Zutphen, 2000), pp. 100,101,239. 9 Prakash, “Opium Monopoly”, p. 83; See also L.C.D. van Dijk, “Bijvoegsels tot de proeve eener geschiedenis van den handel en het verbruik van opium in Nederlandsch Indië door den heer J.C. Baud”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië, 2 (1854), pp. 200–1. 10 Jacobs, Koopman in Azië, p. 102.
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Maratha forces plundered Bengal many times. In 1751, Alivardi Khan, de jure the Mughal governor but de facto the autonomous Nawab of Bengal, negotiated an agreement and obtained indemnity from Maratha raids in return for an annual tribute of 1,200,000 rupees and the virtual retreat from Orissa. In order to fill his empty coffers, the Nawab increased taxation on all quarters of society.11 According to Taillefert, Alivardi Khan never reduced taxes when income declined, yet, when it rose he always extorted the surplus. So, treasure that had before been used in trade, was now amassed in the capital Murshidabad. Merchants, weavers, peasants and artisans, all had to suffer dearly for the greed of the Nawab; they went bankrupt, prices rose, weaving and labour costs became higher, and the cost of transport increased.12 The future did not look any better. Alivardi Khan being in his eighties, would be succeeded by his grandson Siraj al-Daula who had alienated many persons on whom his power had rested. When he came to the throne in 1756, he tried to concentrate power by attacking the English fort in Calcutta. The English under Robert Clive reacted efficiently by bringing the British army from Madras. This army defeated Siraj al-Daula in the famous battle of Plassey in June 1757. For the English East India Company it was a stroke of luck that the French had sided with Siraj al-Daula. Now they were at the mercy of the EIC. The position of the VOC was a little better, as it had stayed neutral. What had changed, though, was the presence of a relatively modern English army. Neither the Nawab, nor the Dutch possessed such a force. For the time being, the aims of the English were rather conservative: they wanted to restore their ancient rights and prerogatives. For that purpose a stable and proEnglish government was needed in Murshidabad. Clive was soon to grasp a golden opportunity to promote the EIC’s and his own interests.13 For some time the Batavia Council had considered the fort at Chinsura to be rather weak. In the end of 1757 it reported that the engineer Claude Ogerdias had been sent to reconnoitre the building of a new fort defendable with 500 soldiers at Banquibazar, where 11 P.J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead. Eastern India 1740–1828 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 70–3. 12 NA, VOC 2849, “Memorandum Taillefert to Bisdom 1755”, ff. 148r–149v. 13 Marshall, Bengal, pp. 74–82.
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the Ostend Company once had had her fort.14 Obviously, Batavia fostered plans for Bengal; it had certainly not written it off. At the moment, the English did not envision basic change. As mentioned already, their goal was to re-establish trade on the old footing. London did not have great plans for Bengal either. It wanted the gains of the Asia—Europe trade to come in as usual, not a change in mercantile policies.15 For the time being, the events on the Coromandel Coast attracted strong attention. At the end of 1758 the Batavia Council reported home that the French had taken Fort St. David from the English. This showed that the English were still vulnerable. However, within the new relations of power the Dutch tried to stay neutral. At the end of 1758, the Batavia Council criticised the factors at Nagapattinam on the Coromandel Coast, as well as the master of one of the Dutch ships, for giving salutation to the French. Still more reproachable it thought the fact that pains had been taken to provide the French with victuals. This would raise the suspicion of the English. On the other hand, the French were a real nuisance: they had seized the ship Haarlem and had kept the Oostkapelle at Machilipatnam. When it was allowed to leave it had been wrecked because of bad weather. However, real French power was limited as their army was dispersed on its way to Tanjavur and their fleet had to seek refuge in Pondicherry after the battle of Nagapattinam.16 At home, the Gentlemen XVII were not at all content with the cloth trade in Bengal. They had evidence that the English were better served than the Dutch and complained about the situation to Batavia. Governor-General Mossel referred to a report saying that the problems in Bengal resulted neither from fraud nor incapability of the servants there. Instead, this report focused on the manner of contracting with local intermediaries: whether with only one, or with multiple merchants. It was held that many contractors needed more money to live on than one. Facing competition they had to pay higher prices to the weavers than in the case of one contractor. Moreover, with many merchants there could be many bankruptcies as well as a tendency of dragging out debts for long periods.17
NA, VOC 2890, “General letter, 31–12–1757”, ff. 695r–695v. Marshall, Bengal, pp. 78–9. 16 NA, VOC 2912, “General letter, 30–12–1758”, ff. 466r–467v, 469v–471v, 479r–480r, 482v–483v. 17 NA, VOC 4881, “Letter to Jacob Mossel, 5–9–1757”, unfoliated. 14 15
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In March 1758 Adriaan Bisdom imposed his own point of view upon the Council of Chinsura and decided that a contract for the delivery of textiles was to be made with a single merchant. The Batavia Council strongly criticised what they considered as Bisdom’s highhanded behaviour. Moreover, he had transgressed the rules by standing guarantee in person for the selected merchant. According to the Council, it was too risky to put faith in one contractor only, since he could come down in misfortune. Other strong merchants who had been passed over, would go to the English, and the weaker ones would be at the mercy of the Company’s merchant. Besides, who knew for sure that the contractor would enter a contract the next year?18 Apparently, for Bisdom these disadvantages counted for little against his own, shared interests with the contractor concerned. After the political transition of 1757, the VOC had become very vulnerable in Bengal. The Council in Bengal, as well as that in Batavia, were of the opinion that the Company undeservedly suffered from a conflict that was not theirs. Despite their neutrality the Company had experienced: “the obstruction of the free and privileged trade, the seizure of money and goods when transported upand down the river, forceful seclusion from the most important branches of trade, all sorts of unjustified extortion of money, as well as violent harassment”. Besides the Dutch were horrified by the demand to offer 100,000 rupees as a gift to celebrate and acknowledge the accession of the new Nawab, Mir Jafar. Mir Jafar’s son, Miran, also tried to press the Dutch for money. The chief at Kasimbazar, George Lodewijk Vernet, could only but comply to the demands and paid the 100,000 rupees. Although this was approved by the Batavia Council, it also fostered some hope that “once a good opportunity would come for the Company to take reprisals for all this”.19 All this was noted in the Batavia Council’s general letter of December 1759. By then, however, the military expedition to Bengal had already started. In Dutch historiography this expedition has been treated as a “black page” in Dutch history. The first scholar who studied it on the basis of the VOC records was G.C. Klerk de Reus.20
NA, VOC 2912, “General letter, 30–12–1758”, ff. 400v–411v. NA, VOC 2943, “General letter, 31–12–1759”, f. 1633v. 20 G.C. Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie naar Bengale in 1759”, Indische Gids, 11,2 (1889), pp. 2093–118; 12,1 (1890), pp. 27–90, 247–78. 18 19
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In his positivist approach, history was a quest for truth, as well as an edifying art. The embarrassing events in Bengal were to be presented as a moral example. Klerk de Reus’ second motive was his anxiety that foreign, i.e. English, scholars would write about it. They would surely glorify Robert Clive to the detriment of those clumsy Dutchmen.21 Later, C.R. Boxer depicted the expedition as “an ill-conceived and disastrously executed endeavour”.22 Holden Furber criticised the Dutch enterprise more moderately. He thought that after Plassey there was only room for one “country power” and that Governor-General Jacob Mossel and his advisers highly underestimated the strength of the English Company.23 More recently, the Dutch “historian of the VOC”, Femme Gaastra, can only but agree. He considers its management a blunder, without prospect from the beginning, “a typical example of the half-hearted action of the Company in that century”.24 The most detailed account in recent literature is provided by Winius and Vink who suggest that Adriaan Bisdom had his own interests in mind when the Dutch fleet appeared in Bengal.25 Referring to Klerk de Reus, Om Prakash claims that the Dutch tried to keep up with the British and to elude their growing strength: In the process, they embarked upon a bizarre adventure, ill-conceived and disastrously executed, which one might take note of if for no other reason than because, other than in Malabar in the 1660s, it constituted the only organised attempt by the VOC to employ naval-cumland forces in the Indian subcontinent.26
Pondering over the assessment of Om Prakash and others, one wonders why the Batavia Council under Jacob Mossel embarked upon such a prospectless adventure at all. Indeed, with the after-knowledge of the battle of Wandiwash in 1760, when the English defeated the French, and that of Buxar in 1764, when the English defeated
21
Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1889), p. 2094. C.R. Boxer, Jan Compagnie in oorlog en vrede. Beknopte geschiedenis van de VOC (Bussum, 1977), pp. 77–8. 23 Holden Furber, Rival empires of trade in the Orient 1600–1800 (Minneapolis, 1976), p. 168. 24 F.S. Gaastra, De geschiedenis van de VOC (Zutphen, 2002), pp. 59–60. 25 G.D. Winius and M.P.M. Vink, The Merchant-Warrior Pacified. The VOC (The Dutch East India Company) and its Changing Political Economy in India (Delhi, 1994), pp. 127–9. 26 Prakash, European Commercial Entreprise, p. 271. 22
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Mir Qasim, the Nawab of Awadh and the Mughal emperor, the Dutch expedition of 1759 looks rather bizarre. But before reassessing Batavia’s decision let us first take a fresh look at the most important stages of the expedition proper: (1) its planning, (2) its preparation, and (3) its execution.
The expedition When writing on the establishment of a new fort at Banquibazar, Adriaan Bisdom reported that it required a force of 2,000 European and 6,000 Asian soldiers. However, on 15 January 1759, when discussing Governor-General Jacob Mossel’s proposal of a military expedition to the Indian subcontinent, the High Government decided to send not more than 1,000 European and 1,000 Asian soldiers, with an additional 1,000 European and Asian troops levied from Malabar. It remained a moot question where exactly in India the fleet of 6 to 8 ships (of 150 feet) would operate. The decision was left to the heads of the establishments concerned. Curiously, it was also ordered not to give offence either to the English or the French, or to any Asian ruler. A general show of force was deemed sufficient.27 The broad purpose of the expedition was narrowed down after Batavia received a secret letter (21 November 1758) from Adriaan Bisdom complaining about the English who hampered not only the procurement of saltpetre, but of opium too. Clearly, they were trying to force the Dutch out of Bengal. However, there was also some good news. The High Government had heard rumours that Mir Jafar’s son, Miran, was fed up with the English and entertained plans to revolt. So it quickly grasped the opportunity to remedy the ongoing humiliations in Bengal. On 6 February 1759 the Batavia Council resolved to secretly authorise Bisdom to summon the fleet to Bengal if a revolt against Mir Jafar would break out. In that case assistance could be offered to Miran in return for the payment of all costs and the restoration of all former prerogatives to the Company.28 The Dutch must have been aware that assisting Miran would automatically lead to a confrontation with the English. In a secret instruc-
27 28
Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1889), pp. 2103–6. Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1889), pp. 2106–7.
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tion to Adriaan Bisdom the High Government said that now there was an opportunity to revenge the insolent behaviour of the English and to reinstall the Company as of old in its free and unhampered trade. This would be worth the risk since the English were now rather weak in Bengal and the population deplored their usurpation of trade without paying tolls.29 On the one hand, knowing the fate of the expedition and the rise to power of the English in Bengal, it is inexplicable the High Government risked a war against them merely on the basis of rumours of revolt. On the other hand, as argued above, in the spring of 1759 the English had not yet consolidated their power all over the subcontinent. Stopping them was still worth a try. Most narratives of the expedition refer to and are based on the detailed account given by Klerk de Reus who does not shun to blame or praise the actors involved. Adriaan Bisdom and Justus Baak, the master of the Visvliet, are judged to be responsible for the disaster, whereas George Lodewijk Vernet, the second-in-command residing at Kasimbazar, is called very resolute.30 Patriotism deluded Klerk de Reus to make these kind of judgements. From a more neutral point of view, we may observe that Vernet surely advocated the show of force. He reported that Mir Jafar was fed up with the English and had promised the Dutch freedom of inland trade against a 2½ % toll. According to Vernet, Mir Jafar had invited the assistance of the VOC’s troops after Vernet had praised the power of the Dutch Company. When this information reached Batavia in July 1759, the expedition was already on its way.31 Consequently, it did not influence the decision-making at Batavia. Batavia’s secret instruction to Adriaan Bisdom arrived at Chinsura on 17 June 1759. On the Dutch side, Bisdom and Vernet blamed each other for not acting on it. On the English side, Robert Clive, was fully informed of the Dutch plans by a spy. He pressed Mir Jafar to consider the Dutch as his enemies and, on the basis of the treaty of 1757, to request support from the EIC. With this in hand Clive was free to act against the Dutch.32
29 30 31 32
Klerk Klerk Klerk Klerk
de de de de
Reus, Reus, Reus, Reus,
“De “De “De “De
expeditie” expeditie” expeditie” expeditie”
(1889), (1890), (1889), (1890),
pp. 2116–8. pp. 35–40. p. 2108. pp. 31–5.
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On June 16th the Dutch fleet left the roads of Batavia. All of them were ordinary merchant ships that were about to return to the Netherlands, two via Coromandel, and four via Bengal. One small yacht would go along for reconnoitring. The number of soldiers was small, compared to what had been planned: neither the 2,000 European and 6,000 Asian soldiers required by Bisdom, nor the 1,000 European and 1,000 Asian ones deemed necessary by the Batavia Council, but only 331 European and 565 Asian troops were on board. The commander of the armed forces was Jean Baptiste Roussel, who stood under the political command of the mercantile authorities in Bengal.33 On the roads of Banten the fleet met the ships arriving from Holland. From these 200 soldiers were taken aboard but, in Roussel’s opinion, they were totally untrained, having no uniforms, more peasants than soldiers. Despite the instruction to call on Ceylon first, on August 8th the fleet reached Nagapattinam on the Coromandel Coast. Here Roussel disembarked to give his soldiers some necessary training. Leaving again on September 13th, the ships anchored at Falta on the river Hooghly south of Calcutta on October 12th.34 To understand the failure of the expedition it is not necessary to retell the whole story. It suffices to discuss the points to which the catastrophe has been attributed. First of all, the lonely early arrival of the Visvliet, one of the flotilla’s ships. At the very beginning of the expedition, its master, Justus Baak, had already steered away from the fleet and arrived at the mouth of the Hooghly as early as August 21st, as he alleged, forced by heavy storm. Not amused, Roussel charged him of speeding up to Bengal to be the first to sell his private goods there. Although Clive already had strong suspicion of a Dutch intervention, the arrival of the Visvliet, with troops aboard, confirmed it. Immediately he put strong guards in the Mughal fort of Makwa Tanna as well as in the opposite stronghold of Charnoe, five miles south of Calcutta.35 A surprise attack was now impossible. After the arrival of the ships at Falta on October 12th, lengthy discussions dragged on in letters between Bisdom and Vernet at Chinsura, who now held the supreme command, and Roussel in the
33 34 35
Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1890), p. 28. Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1890), pp. 51–3. Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1889), p. 2111; (1890), pp. 38–9, 51–3, 56–7.
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fleet. Bisdom was particularly uncertain about what to do. At last, on November 10th, he ordered the capture, search, and return of seven English ships. Unfortunately, the Dutch lowered the flag on these ships and took the crew prisoner. Later, under the negotiations on the affair, this became a serious bone of contention for the English. Afterwards three English king’s ships navigated upstream together with the Dutch ships. By overhauling the Dutch, the English ships managed to take the best strategic position for battle. In the night of November 21st and 22nd the Dutch troops were put ashore. Now the English had a legal cause to attack, since the Dutch troops had entered the Nawab’s territory against his wishes and the English had the authority to protect him. The English attacked the Dutch fleet with the three ships that were now situated upstream. The Dutch were in the majority, but only four of their ships were ready for battle. Of the seven ships that left Batavia two stayed in Coromandel as planned, with four additional ships joining the fleet there. So, although nine ships had arrived in Bengal, two of them were to return, with merchandise, to Holland, leaving a fleet of seven ships in Bengal. In addition, the Dutch lost three other ships: the two small yachts were in disrepair and were put out of service; one other ship had drifted too far downstream due to poor navigation. Only four ships remaining, the battle ended in an absolute disaster for the Dutch. With their anchor lines first dragging and later shot apart, the Dutch ships became entangled with each other and helplessly drifted downstream to finally run ashore. The English had more boats to manoeuvre their ships by towing than the Dutch. After 2½ hours the Dutch had to surrender.36 On 22 November, when the soldiers from the ships started their march, a force of 400 men with four cannon left Chinsura to lead the English troops astray. Bisdom ordered them not to engage in any offensive actions. If possible, the English had to be put to flight, but in case their forces were superior, the Dutch had to retreat cautiously. Whatever the order, the Dutch column ran straight into the fire of 500 English mercenaries and was utterly defeated. Only 60 of them returned safely to Chinsura. The fate of the troops put ashore from the fleet was not much better. From November 22nd
36
Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1890), pp. 41–7, 53–62.
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to 25th they marched day and night mostly along roads and through fields that were flooded to their knees. Many times Chinsura was said to be near, even though Roussel admits in his report that he distrusted his guides and had no idea where he was. On 25 November, totally exhausted, the Dutch met the English—counting 320 European and 800 sepoy infantry, and 50 European and 100 Asian cavalry— at Bedara, near Chandernagore, eight miles from Chinsura. Again, the Dutch were totally defeated: 120 Europeans and 200 Asians were killed. Roussel and fourteen officers, 320 Europeans and 200 Asians were captured. Of all Dutch soldiers only fourteen reached Chinsura safely.37 Now it became clear who pulled the strings in Bengal. The Dutch could only but succumb to the demands of the English. It was agreed that the VOC would give an indemnity for all damages caused by the Dutch ships, and that ships, ammunition and other properties would be returned to both sides. However, the English demanded that the Dutch would enter a treaty with the Nawab first. Herein, the VOC had to make many concessions. The Company promised to take back all troops and to limit the European military presence within the factories in Bengal, Patna and Balasore to 125. In future, the VOC promised it would trade peacefully. After this treaty had been agreed on 5 December 1759, the English and Dutch ratified their agreement, under the condition of final approval by their superiors, on 8 December.38 That the conditions for the Dutch had changed drastically, became clear soon, when the Nawab, on the allegation that the Dutch were conspiring with a rebellious Mughal prince who threatened Bengal, forced them to pull down the outer-bulwarks of the fort at Chinsura, and to pay an indemnity of 50,000 rupees. Meanwhile, the threats from the Nawab towards the Dutch and the insults from the English went on. Finally, on 23 August 1760, a new treaty was drawn up between the Dutch and the Nawab, which was guaranteed by the English. To make sure that the Dutch would never again militarily intervene, it was agreed that they were not allowed to have more than one ship upstream from Mayapur along the river Hooghly to
37
Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1890), pp. 47–50, 62–71. Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1890), pp. 250–5; F.W. Stapel (ed.), Corpus diplomaticum Neerlando-Indicum, Vol. 6 (The Hague, 1955), pp. 188–94. 38
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Chinsura. Moreover, the English obtained the right to inspect the number of Dutch soldiers and arms on behalf of the Nawab. The maximum of 125 troops was reaffirmed. In spite of the obvious humiliation, Bisdom appears to have been glad with the treaty as it recognised the old prerogatives involving the right of free and unhampered trade (except in saltpetre), and that of minting at Murshidabad.39 On receiving the news of the disaster in Bengal, the High Government wrote a furious letter to Bisdom and Council dated 21 August 1760. It charged Bisdom with indolence and erratic conduct, and Justus Baak, the master of the Visvliet, of insubordination. Bisdom and Vernet had to pay f 45,951 of the indemnity out of a total f 75,428 due to the English. Justus Baak, safely back in Holland, was sacked with loss of all pay on his account. At first, the Batavia Council rejected all agreements with the Nawab and the English. However, in December 1761, when reality dawned on them, it gave in and accepted that in future the VOC in Bengal should restrict itself to commercial activities. The Gentlemen XVII deplored the events in Bengal but soon returned to business as usual.40
Reappraisal Within the Batavia Council the Governor-General had to plan and manage the policy of the VOC. This Jacob Mossel did. As Bengal was very important for the Asia—Europe trade and as the battle of Plassey had given the English a privileged position there, he submitted a project for military action involving the VOC’s Indian factories. The purpose was to show that not only the English and the French, but also the Dutch were able to deploy a war-fleet. In a secret instruction to Bisdom the Batavia Council cleared the way for an expedition to Bengal. The final decision was left to him. The project was not as bizarre as it looks at first sight. The English were not yet firmly established in Bengal and, for that matter, certainly not in India. Robert Clive showed what troops drilled in a European way were capable of. Fort William had survived as the centre of English power in Bengal, so for the Dutch it was worthwhile to try
39 40
Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1890), pp. 255–61; Stapel, Corpus, 6, pp. 205–9. Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie” (1890), pp. 262–71.
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and build a matching centre of power at Banquibazar. To a certain degree Batavia intended to follow the example of the English. Here, we touch on the weak point of the project. Hindsight teaches us that the position of the English in Bengal changed dramatically and that they would not admit another European power to threaten them. But at the moment of the expedition the English were still dealing with strong French opposition. It has to be reminded that the French deployed a war-fleet around India and had taken Fort St. David from the English. It was also expected that prince Miran would rebel against his father Mir Jafar. Although this soon proved sheer wishful thinking, it would be too easy to consider Batavia’s decision making bizarre. The judgement of the preparation of the project has to be less favourable. The number of troops sent out happened to be less than half of what had been thought desirable at first. The fleet had a mixed purpose: trade and war. However, the masters of the ships had large interests in trade, because they kept private goods aboard. Justus Baak, the master of the Visvliet, showed that for him trade was more important than the fate of the fleet, and riding anchor for Falta the other masters were very reluctant to engage in battle. Here the limits of the power of the VOC at sea become clear; the ships were operated still as merchant-marines, not as a war-fleet. The execution of the project was disastrous indeed. Bisdom had no faith in action and tried to postpone it as long as possible, making the conditions only worse. There was no co-operation with Vernet who also failed to show much determination in taking charge on the roads of Falta. The preparation for the campaign on land had been terrible: bad scouting of the terrain, no reliable guides, not enough food. It shows how little information the Dutch living at Chinsura had about the countryside. They probably stayed primarily in the fort, and when travelling, only used the river. The English must have known the terrain much better. Finally, the private concerns and interests of the servants of the Company involved must not be overlooked. This is a mysterious, as well as an engrossing aspect of the Company about which many suggestions and speculations have been made, but that still has to be studied closely. As has been said above, Adriaan Bisdom returned home a very wealthy man. Certainly, his private interests in Bengal must have influenced his conduct, but to what extent is difficult to assess. Governor-General Jacob Mossel died on 15 May 1761 at Bata-
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via. Possessing 40 shares in the Opium Society, he had a personal interest in the smooth supply of opium to Batavia.41 All in all, one may agree with the earlier observations that the military expedition to Bengal utterly failed as it was ill-considered, ill-prepared and disastrously executed. But one should not too easily judge decision making on its outcome. The political choice of the Batavia Council may not have been right, under the conditions of the time, it certainly made sense, be it from the Company’s perspective or from the personal point of view of its servants.
41 In 1776 and 1777 his son Jacob Mossel, alderman at Rotterdam, and his sonsin-law Pieter Cornelis Hasselaar and Gerard Maximiliaan Taets van Amerongen received dividends from the Society. In 1786 the Company still owed f 47,402 to the heirs of Jacob Mossel. Then they obtained 47 bonds at f 1,000 on the Company, guaranteed by the States-General (NA, Collectie Mossel , Film 3897, Nrs. 10,14).
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BETWEEN FACT AND FICTIONS: KHOJA GREGORY ALIAS GURGIN KHAN, THE “EVIL GENIUS” OF MIR QASIM1 Bhaswati Bhattacharya
The history of the early modern period in India is full of colourful accounts of adventurers. The European connection that made the subcontinent a part of a larger process with its centre in the West had its effect in that India became a melting pot where people of different origins from numerous countries, far and wide, came to seek their fortune. British private interest, gradually increasing its foothold in India in the eighteenth century, was at its height after the East India Company had been able to replace Siraj al-Daula, the reigning Nawab of Bengal by Mir Jafar, a puppet in the hands of the English. Armenians were, however, a community already present in all important commercial intersections of the country long before the European presence assumed any significance. Coming from a country situated directly on one of the major trade routes connecting Asia and Europe, the Armenians had spread over different parts of the world. Naturally India, by the merit of its central geographical position in the Indian Ocean and by virtue of the products it offered to the international circuit of commerce, attracted, among others, a large number of Armenians. Indeed, in many cases, Armenians helped the western Europeans on their first arrival to find their way in India.2 Their long acquaintance with countries where they traded and the ease with which they interacted with the elites in those countries encouraged others to employ them as emissaries. Armenians assisted the European Companies in India in their investment and often 1 I would like to thank Gautam Bhadra for the encouragement I have received in preparing this essay and the help he has extended in locating sources. The usual disclaimers apply. 2 The legend has it that when the Portuguese came to South India in search of St. Thomas, it was the Armenians who took them to the mount named after the saint. I owe this information to Michael J. Stephen, the warden of the Armenian Church, Chennai.
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accompanied the embassies sent by them to the Great Mughals. Hand in glove with indigenous merchants, bankers and the East India Company, Armenian merchants in contemporary Bengal were close to the darbàr politics. Both praised and criticised in contemporary travelogues mainly for their access to all branches of commerce and their success in that profession, already in the eighteenth century we come across Armenians in professions other than commerce. This article is about such an Armenian who, though he started his career as a merchant, ended up as a military man, another profession open to many foreigners in India in the eighteenth century. Khoja Gregory, perhaps better known in his own times as Gurgin Khan, was one of the few personalities enjoying the privilege of being trusted by Mir Qasim, the last independent Nawab of Bengal. His politico-military career, shorter than the short span of Mir Qasim’s reign (1760–64), is an archetypal example of the life of many adventurers of his times. Contemporary historians noted with surprise, often mixed with jealousy, the achievements of Gurgin Khan. The allegation that the sudden end to his career was caused by his ever suspicious patron himself has pervaded through the historiography while the prominent career of this personality inspired Chattopadhyay Chandra Chattopadhyay, a nationalist author and the first modern Bengali novelist in the nineteenth century to portray him as an aspirant for the throne of Bengal. This latter sentiment has been echoed by an Armenian historian according to whom Gurgin was the “virtual ruler of Bengal, Behar and Orissa” and “would, in time, have become the Nawab of Bengal”.3 The following is an attempt to make a historical evaluation of the life of Khoja Gregory, who from the position of a merchant rose to be the right hand of Mir Qasim, and understand the process leading to the assassination of Khoja Gregory under dramatic and mysterious circumstances.
Early life and reorganising the army Like many Armenians, the three brothers Khoja Petrus, Khoja Gregory and Khoja Barsick Arathoon had come to Bengal from
3
M.J. Seth, Armenians in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day—A Work of Original Research (Calcutta, 1937), p. 385.
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Erivan, a parish of New Julfa in Isfahan.4 While nothing is known about their family back in Persia or their early life, at least it can be said that Khoja Petrus was a resident of Calcutta since about 1749.5 Petrus was an eminent merchant engaged among other things in trading in pearls and bonds and money lending.6 He was married to Dastagool, the daughter of Khoja Minas Elias, Armenian merchant living in Hooghly under the protection of the Dutch East India Company.7 Petrus is also remembered for his diplomatic manoeuvrings during the conspiracy of Plassey.8 Barsick Arathoon was a salt merchant based at Saidabad.9 Khoja Gregory is said to have been a cloth merchant at Hooghly. He was a man with a remarkable physiognomy. His height was above the average. He had fair complexion, large and black fiery eyes, arched eyebrows that were joined in the middle and an aquiline nose with a ridge in the middle of its length.10 How he came in contact with Mir Qasim has remained, however, a matter for conjecture. It has been suggested that Gregory came to know Mir Qasim through his elder brother Petrus, who, disappointed after Plassey, had joined Mir Qasim.11 According to Seth, the chronicler of the Armenians in India, Gregory was a confidant of Mir Qasim and when the latter became the Nawab of Bengal in 1760, he appointed Khoja Gregory the commander-in-chief of his army.12 It was said that the great fortune that Mir Qasim attained, was due partly to this ever vigilant, just, prudent and energetic
4 Both Yerevan and Julfa are names of places in Armenia. Following the forced evacuation of the country and settlement of Armenians in Persia at the behest of Shah Abbas the Great, Armenians renamed the suburb of Isfahan New Julfa. 5 In an application written to the English in 1763 Petrus mentioned that he had been a resident of Calcutta for fourteen to fifteen years ( James Long, Selections from the Unpublished Records of Government for the years 1748 to 1767 inclusive Relating Mainly to the Social Condition of Bengal, no. 252. (Calcutta, 1869)). 6 Calcutta High Court, Invoice of the estate of the late Khoja Petrus, Calcutta, 16 February 1789, Old Will no. 2623, Original Side. 7 Nationaal Archief The Hague (NA), VOC 3005, “Resolutions of the Council at Hooghly, 12 January 1761”, ff. 573v.–74. 8 See e.g. R.K. Ray, Polashir Shorojontro o Sekaler Somaj [The Conspiracy of Plassey and Contemporary Society] (Calcutta, 1998), passim and S. Chaudhury, The Prelude to Empire: Plassey Revolution of 1757 (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 94, 97, 107. 9 Seth, Armenians in India, pp. 360–70 and passim. 10 Saiyid Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai, Seir ul Muthaqherin, 2 vols (Lahore, 1975). All the references in this article are from volume 2, p. 503 (footnote). 11 Tapanmohan Chattopadhyay, Palasir par Buxar (Calcutta: 1st Navana ed., 1983), p. 132. 12 Seth, Armenians in India, p. 384.
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Armenian general of unassailable integrity.13 As it is widely acknowledged that it was Khoja Gregory, renamed Gurgin Khan by Mir Qasim, who for the first time re-modelled the Nawab’s army after the European fashion, it will not be out of place at this point to take into account the performances of the general in this context. Military reforms stood high on the agenda of Mir Qasim who was bent on setting up his independent authority and bringing the English to book. He knew that it was due to two mistakes of Mir Jafar that the English had become so oppressive: he had agreed to accept military assistance of the British and pay the tam∞à (tax imposts) every month and had promised to pay as bribe more than the treasury could afford.14 As soon as he had sorted out the financial crisis, Mir Qasim, who was “studious to procure men of military talents”, paid attention to the restructuring of his army. The appointment of Gurgin Khan as the principal chief of his troops and war minister was a measure noted by contemporaries with jealousy and surprise. One of the best known contemporary sources for the reconstruction of the history of the period concerned is Seir Muthaqherin (P. Siyar alMutà"¶¶irìn) by Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai.15 Ghulam Husain belonged to a noble family—a family more influential and powerful than that of Mir Qasim. The rise of Armenians like Gurgin Khan to prominence must have threatened the interests of families like his own.16 Moreover, it is likely that Husain bore a personal grudge against Gurgin. Mir Qasim expressed his intention to take away Ghulam Husain’s jàgìr at Monghyr, together with the fortress and confer it on Gurgin Khan.17 Consequently, Ghulam did not waste
13 Such was at least the belief of Jean Baptiste Joseph Gentil, who served the French East India Company in India under Dupleix and de Lally. After the capitulation of Chandernagore to the English, he entered the service of Mir Qasim. As a confidant of Gurgin Khan, he accompanied the Armenian general in the Nawab’s camp (C.E.A.W. Oldham, “The Murder of Gurgin Khan”, Bengal Past and Present, 29 (1925), pp. 219–23). 14 A.K. Maitreya, Mir Qasim (Calcutta, 1957), p. 74. 15 The bias of Ghulam Husain against the Armenian Commander-in-Chief of Mir Qasim is clearly evident in the way he talks about Gurgin Khan (Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 389, 422, 447, 455, 500–1). 16 Similar bias is noticed in the writing of Maharaja Kalyan Singh who described Gurgin as the “evil genius of Meer Kasim”. See Khan Bahadur Sarfaraz Husain Khan, “Translation of Maharaja Kalyan Singh’s Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh”, The Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 6,1 1920, p. 127. 17 In exchange, Mir Qasim had offered Ghulam Husain a better estate. But according to the Seir, the exchange never took place (Seir, Vol. 2, p. 425).
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a single word of praise for this Armenian general of Mir Qasim, and throughout jeered at him by describing him as “cloth seller by the yard” “who knew nothing of military affairs” and “the crow wholly intent on learning the linnet’s note” etc., while others found the appointment of an Armenian to the post of the commander-inchief remarkable.18 Raymond, who translated Seir into English, considered Gurgin Khan to be a genius like Muhammad Taqi Khan, the other general of Mir Qasim.19 Military historians also have taken the importance of the measures introduced by Gurgin Khan into consideration.20 The old standing army that Mir Qasim had inherited from his predecessors was gradually disbanded and new troops were recruited entirely on the basis of efficiency. Gurgin himself was the grandmaster of the artillery and trained and disciplined the cavalry, infantry and artillery. This section and the musketeers were re-modelled after European fashion. The ordnance, mainly of brass, was for the most part cast in the country. A gun factory was set up at Monghyr where guns and flint-muskets were being manufactured. According to Raymond, the fire-locks manufactured at Monghyr were better than the best Towerproof arms sent to India for the use of the Company’s troops. The flints, composed of agates found in the Rajmahal Hills were preferred to those from Europe.21 The powder was of very good quality.
Chattopadhyay maintains that Mir Qasim had already taken possession of the estate of Ghulam Husain before he talked to the latter about it (Chattopadhyay, Palasir par Buxar, pp. 130–1). When governor Vansittart called upon Mir Qasim at Monghyr, he stayed in a building raised by Gurgin on the Pirpahar hills of Sitakund (Seir, Vol. 2, p. 443). 18 The sudden rise of Gurgin Khan did not escape the attention of the director of the Dutch East India Company in Bengal: “Armenians play a big role in Bengal since the revolution of 1757. They have not only assisted the English in brewing treason against Sirajuddaula as a result of which Bengal has been enslaved to the English . . . . but also have been able to (I do not know how) acquire a fame among the Muslims as good soldiers. Consequently, Mir Qasim has chosen Choja Gregory, brother of the famous Choja Petrus, the chief commander of his army.” (NA, Hoge Regering Batavia, 246, “Second memoir of Louis Taillefert concerning Bengal, 17 November 1763”, f. 285). 19 Seir, Vol. 2, p. 422 fn. 224. Raymond was a French Creole who later adopted Islam and was called Haji Mustafa. According to him Gurgin was even more knowledgeable than Taqi Khan. 20 See for instance A. Broome, History of the Rise and Progress of the Bengal Army, 2 vols (Calcutta and London, 1850–1), Vol. 1, p. 352. The account of the re-organisation of Mir Qasim’s army here is based largely on Broome. 21 Seir, Vol. 2, p. 421 fn. 222.
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The shot and the shell were partly imported and partly manufactured in the country. When manufactured in the country, the shells were either cast of soft metal or made of stone. The artillery was mounted in the English manner and was served by 200 Europeans. The carriages were of indigenous make, furnished with elevating screws and quite equal to their originals. Magazines and manufactories were founded at different parts of the country. Ordinance, as well as iron guns made in Europe, were, however, readily available as they formed a part of the regular imports made by private European traders.22 Moreover, a large part of the European munitions of the army seems to have been collected by Gurgin Khan himself through the agency of his brother Khoja Petrus who was thick and thin with the English. The cavalry was formed into regiments and rusallahs (P. risàlas). The ranks were chiefly filled by Afghans, Rohillas and other races from the north and the commanders were almost exclusively Muslim. The total strength of this force was limited to about 16,000 but the increased efficiency was supposed to have compensated for the reduction in numbers. The infantry was also formed to a great extent upon the model of English sipàhì battalions. It was composed of two classes: najìbs and telingas. While the former retained the indigenous dress and were armed with match-locks, the uniform and the equipment of the latter were exactly copied from the European models. The muskets with which they were armed were all made in the country. It should be remembered that Gurgin Khan was not the only Armenian in Mir Qasim’s army. He had gathered about one hundred Armenians with a few of them appointed as generals, colonels and captains.23 Among them Margar Johannes Khalanthar—noted for his bravery and capability during the capture of Patna—and Arathoon Margar held important ranks in the army.24 Margar was supposed to have learnt the techniques of war in Europe as he had served in Holland.25 He had formed a special troop with soldiers from all the
22 Arms and ammunition imported by European ships to Asia were very much in demand in countries around the Indian Ocean. 23 T. Khojamall, A Short History of India, source: Seth, Armenians in India, pp. 413–4. 24 Broome, History of the Rise and Progress, Vol. 1, p. 352; and Seth, Armenians in India, p. 413. 25 Seir, Vol. 2, p. 474 fn. 250.
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three departments of the army. Among the European officers in the army the name of Walter Reinhardt, better known as Sommers or Sumroo has been a synonym for brutality and cold blooded murder.26 While all of them were efficient, Gurgin had the general control of the force and was in charge of the military arrangements acting in double capacity as commander-in-chief and war minister.
Aspiring for the throne? From the pages of history to contemporary politics, it is not altogether unusual to come across a commander-in-chief of an army taking over the helm of the state. In one of his novels Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, the famous nationalist Bengali writer of the nineteenth century, has portrayed Gurgin Khan as an opportunist aspiring for the Nawabi of Bengal. Gurgin, in Chattopadhyay’s imagination, was using Mir Qasim, patiently awaiting the time he could get rid of the Nawab and drive the English out of Bengal. In a sketch of his life, Mesrovb Seth, who went through many contemporary accounts, and who was anxious to establish the loyalty of Gurgin to the Nawab, also came to a similar conclusion about the intentions of the former: Had he [Gurgin Khan] not fallen a victim to the sword of an unknown assassin. . . . [Gurgin] who for three years (1760–1763) was the virtual ruler of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, would, in time, have become the Nawab of Bengal with the help of the well-disciplined and powerful army at his command . . .27
Before entering into the question if such an assertion has any historical basis, it would be interesting to see how Chattopadhyay introduces the character of Gurgin Khan to the reader in his novel Chandrasekhar: Among all the statesmen in Bengal at that time, Gurgan Khan was one of the best and most superior. He was an Armenian from Isfahan. It is said that he was a cloth merchant in his early life. But he was
26 It is however the fascinating life of the nautch girl who became known as Begam Samru after her marriage to Reinhardt that has inspired historians. See Bandyopadhyay Brajendranath, Begam Samru (Calcutta, 1925); John Lall, Begam Samru: Fading Portrait in a Gilded Frame (New Delhi, 1997). 27 Seth, Armenians in India, p. 385.
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a man of extra ordinary quality and a genius. Soon after he was employed by the Nawab, he became the Commander-in-Chief of the army. On getting that position, he created a new artillery. The gunners were trained and dressed after the European method. The cannons and guns that were manufactured under his instruction were better than those made in Europe. In every respect his artillery was equivalent to the artillery of the English. Mir Qasim had hoped that he would be able to defeat the English with the help of Gurgan Khan. His authority became so extensive that Mir Qasim did not take any step without consulting Gurgan Khan. Consequently, Gurgan Khan became a small Nawab. This annoyed the Muslim bureaucrats.28
In the introduction to the first edition of Chandrasekhar Chattopadhyay noted that he had depended on the English translation of Seir for the historical events in the novel. The racial prejudice of Ghulam Husain had not escaped his attention. Ghulam Husain, Gentil and others were all one in their observation that Mir Qasim depended on the advice of Gurgin Khan for every action he took. There is, however no indication in their work that Gurgin was planning to replace Mir Qasim though the way he was suddenly killed was thought to have been instigated by the rumour that together with the English, Gurgin was involved in a plot against the Nawab. In the existing political atmosphere in early modern India, alliances and loyalty changed very often. Moreover, Chattopadhyay did not have to stretch his imagination far to seek the precedence of officials, merchants and allies joining in a conspiracy to overthrow the ruler. It was only through conspiracy that Mir Jafar had replaced Siraj alDaula, and Mir Qasim himself ascended the throne in the same way. Consequently, though not suggested in contemporary historical literature, Khoja Gregory secretly contemplating the removal of Mir Qasim from the scene becomes a “fact” in Chattopadhyay’s fiction: Gurgan Khan tied up the letters and concealed them in a suitable place. He began to ponder: “Now which path shall I take? Bharatbarsha is now like a sea—whoever is capable of diving deeper, would get
28 Bankim Rachanabali [Collected Works of Bankim] (Calcutta, Beng. Era 1372 (1965), Vol. 1, p. 414 (my translation). Chandrasekhar is a romantic novel set against the background of the reign of Mir Qasim. It is not the intention to evaluate Chattopadhyay’s novels here: our interest is in the character of Gurgin as portrayed by Chattopadhyay. For an excellent literay and sociological appreciation of Chattopadhyay’s work, see S. Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Chattopadhyaychandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi, 1995).
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more treasures. What is the use of counting the waves sitting on the shore? Well, I used to sell cloth by the yard and now the whole of Bharatbarsha is restless out of fear for me. I am the sovereign of Bengal. Am I really the sovereign of Bengal? Who is in fact the sovereign? The English merchants are the sovereigns of Bengal—Mir Qasim is their servant—I am the servant of the servant of the sovereign—a pretty high position indeed! Why can I not be the sovereign of Bengal? Who is able to face my cannons? The English? I wish I could get them once! But I cannot be the sovereign of the country unless the English are driven out. I would like to be the lord of Bengal—I do not care for Mir Qasim. The day I shall think so, I shall dethrone him. He was only a ladder to climb up; now that I am on the rooftop, I can discard him. The bloody English are the only thorn in the flesh. They want to bring me under their control just as I want to control them. They cannot be controlled, so I shall drive them away. Let Mir Qasim remain on the throne now; with his help I shall erase the English from the map of Bengal. That is why I am taking the initiative to begin the war. Afterwards I shall bid farewell to Mir Qasim.29
Again, contemporaries noted that it was Mir Qasim who was impatient and wanted to launch a war at every single provocation on the part of the English. Gurgin, they noted, was intelligent and a man of sound sense exerting all his influence to restrain the Nawab’s indignation against the provocations of the English and like a true loyalist calming down the Nawab and inducing him to postpone hostilities till the time was ripe.30 But in Chattopadhyay’s imagination, Gurgin himself is aspiring for the throne and as such he cannot wait for the events to take their turn and has to incite the war. That message is given once again through the conversation between Gurgin Khan and his sister Dalani Begum who visits him secretly at night:31
29
Bankim Rachanabali, Vol. 1, pp. 414–5. Raymond e.g. noted that every time Gurgin Khan saw Mir Qasim provoked at the exhibition of haughtiness and pride on the part of the English, he would calm the latter down by saying “Bear and forebear, you are not yet fledged. reserve that anger till the time when you shall have feathers to your wings.” (Seir, Vol. 2, p. 422 fn. 224). 31 In Chattopadhyay’s novel Mir Qasim is married to the sister of Gurgin Khan who is known as Dalani Begam. No one knows, however, that Dalani is related to Gurgan; hence the secrecy. There is no evidence to show that Gurgin had a sister. Mir Qasim was, of course married to the daughter of Mir Jafar. Ghulam Husain informs us that though Mir Qasim had a vast number of women, that was only in conformity with the custom of the Indian princes, and not for his use (Seir, Vol. 2, p. 491). 30
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D: I have come here to ask you something —is it true that a war against the English is on the cards? G: Don’t you hear anything about it in the fort itself? D: Yes, I do; the rumour in the fort has it that a war against the English is imminent, and you have instigated this war. Why? G: Let it be; why should you and I bother if there is a war against the English? If it so happens, let it be. D: Do you think you can win? G: That is very much likely. D: Whosoever has won against the English so far? G: How many Gurgan Khans have the English fought? D: Siraj-ud-daula thought that too. . . . it appears to me that there is no way we can win against the English in this war. This war will cause our ruin. Therefore I have come to you with a requestplease do not incite this war!. . . . . Gurgan Khan was surprised. He said “why are you crying? Even if Mir Qasim is dethroned, I shall take you back to our homeland”.32
In his portrait of Gurgin, Chattopadhyay seems to have taken entirely to the spirit of Ghulam Husain whose bitterness against Gurgin Khan in particular is evident in his book. It is this spirit that inspires Chattopadhyay to create situations time and again when Gurgin is disloyal to Mir Qasim. Not only that, Gurgin, as he has the Nawab under his control, is able to instigate the war and persuade Mir Qasim to dance to his tune: K: The rumour is that two boats loaded with instalments of arms and ammunition have arrived at the ghat with an Englishman on board. Those two vessels have been captured. Ali Ibrahim Khan is in favour of setting the boats free as otherwise there will be a war with the English. Gurgan has said “If a war starts, let it be. We shall not let the boats go”. D: Where are the arms bound for? K: For the lodge at Azimabad [Patna]. If a war starts, it will begin there. The arms are being sent so that the English at that place are not taken by surprise. This is the rumour that runs in the fort. D: Why does Gurgan Khan want to arrest the boats? K: He says it will be difficult to end the war if so many weapons are collected there. The enemy should not be allowed to grow . . .33
32
Bankim Rachanabali, Vol. 1, p. 415. This conversation is between Dalani and her personal attendant Kulsam (Bankim Rachanabali, Vol. 1, p. 413). 33
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Among the military historians, Broome praised Gurgin as “a man of intelligence and sound sense, . . . attached to his employer whom he served with fidelity”.34 It is interesting to note that Malleson, in his account of the army of Mir Qasim and the battle of Udhuanala, did not mention Gurgin at all. Writing in the 1880s, Malleson had at least the works of Ghulam Husain and Broome at his disposal. Both these authors acknowledged that the modernising changes in the army of Mir Qasim on the European model were implemented by Gurgin Khan.35 Though he mentioned that Mir Qasim entrusted the remaking of his army to “adventurers, especially Frenchmen and foreigners whose dislike to the English he could not doubt”, and named Sumroo and Margar in this context, Malleson gave all the credit for remodelling and disciplining the army to Mir Qasim himself.36 Maitreya, the biographer of Mir Qasim first maintained that Gurgin was loyal and faithful to Mir Qasim;37 but then he seems to have mistaken Arathoon and Gurgin to be the same person—“An Armenian general called Aratoon or Khoja Gregory became famous in Mir Qasim’s court as Gorgin Khan”—and blamed Gurgin for having betrayed the cause of Mir Qasim. According to Maitreya, the “thoroughly trustworthy” (ekanto bishwasbhajon) Khoja Gregory indeed assisted the English. Major Adams was trying to win over Gurgin through his brother Petrus, known since the time of Siraj al-Daula as a well wisher of the English. It was this intimacy [atmiyota] between Gurgin and the English, and not the military superiority of the latter that resulted in the victory of the English at Udhuanala. And it was the knowledge of this friendship that led Mir Qasim to mercilessly murder Gurgin Khan. Maitreya was equally dismissive of the other Armenian commanders in Mir Qasim’s army.38 Writing in the early years of
34
Broome, History of the Rise and Progress, p. 352. Broome, History of the Rise and Progress, p. 352. The way Ghulam Husain described it, was far from flattering (Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 500–1). 36 G.B. Malleson, Decisive Battles of India (London, 1885), pp. 141–3. 37 Maitreya, Mir Qasim, pp. 115–6. 38 “Aratoon othoba Khoja Gregory namok Armani Senapati Mir Qasimer darbare Gorgin Khan name khyati labh koriachhilen,” (Maitreya, Mir Qasim, pp. 178–9). It is possible that this confusion was due to the fact that Maitreya’s account of Mir Qasim’s army was based on that of Malleson. The latter did not mention Gurgin at all though he noted that Arathoon commanded a 4000 strong brigade trained in the European fashion (Malleson, Decisive Battles, p. 166). 35
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the twentieth century, Seth, although he maintained that Gurgin would have been the Nawab of Bengal in time, was at pains to establish the innocence of Gurgin Khan and his loyalty to Mir Qasim. What evidence do we have then, to either prove or disprove the alleged guilt of Gurgin Khan? Was he really plotting against Mir Qasim in league with the English? Was his murder engineered by Mir Qasim or was it the brain child of some other vested interests? This will be analysed in the light of the relationship between Mir Qasim and the English and the role of Gurgin Khan till the breaking out of the war between the two sides.
Mir Qasim and the English From all the measures that Mir Qasim took since the time he ascended the throne of Bengal, it is clear that his intention was to re-establish Mughal sovereignty in Bengal free from the interference of the English and by the same token, bring the latter back to their original footing of merchants. He curtailed the extravagance of the court establishments. He also subjected the public accounts to a severe scrutiny. All the arrears of rent were rigorously exacted and a reassessment of the land led to the increase in the land revenue. These measures made it possible for him to discharge his obligations to the English. The swiftness with which he mobilised the financial resources to pay off the outstanding demands of the English and the arrears due to the Murshidabad troops deserved praise. But in spite of his best intentions to keep the English in good humour and avoid war, rupture soon became unavoidable over an issue that shook the very basis of Mir Qasim’s sovereignty. The imperial farmàn granted to the English East India Company in 1717 had given the Company the right to import into and export from the Mughal Empire duty-free subject to an annual tribute of Rs. 10,000 at Surat and Rs. 3,000 in Bengal. This privilege was, however, supposed to cover only the trade of the Company and not meant for the inland trade of its servants. Being the most prosperous province of India, Bengal in the eighteenth century was a hub of commerce. The growing China trade of the Company in this period gave an extra push to the concentration of private European interest in the region. Before Plassey, private interest of the English was for the most part directed to the sea-borne trade. But after
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Plassey, the inland trade of Bengal had emerged for the army officers and the Company servants in Bengal as the most promising field for making a quick fortune.39 The freedom from the customs duties was extended in an illegitimate and uncontrolled manner to the private inland trade of the English in Bengal and Bihar. By further extension, gumàshtas of the English and other indigenous traders willing to evade the duties could buy the dastaks, or simply hoist the Company’s flag on passing a transit duty post (chaukì ). While the Nawab was deprived of his revenues and the trade of the country was totally disorganised, any attempt on behalf of the Nawab to resist the most glaring frauds met violent protest from the members of the Council in Calcutta. As more and more Englishmen penetrated the market towns and villages of Bengal dealing in rice, paddy, salt, bamboo, straw, tobacco, betel-nut, copper, lack, sticklack, dammar, dried fish and all sorts of sundry goods they had never traded before, they not only forced the peasants to buy their goods at a rate much above the market price, but also exacted large sums for presents. The Nawab’s officials from different districts informed him about their helplessness against the Company officials, private English merchants and their gumàshtas. While they systematically flouted the authority of Mir Qasim, the latter was also concerned as these activities deprived the poor of their subsistence.40 Repeated intimations to the Governor in Council on behalf of Mir Qasim and his officials were in vain. The Nawab had already acceded the English the right to coin sikka rupees in his mints. As a last resort, the infuriated Mir Qasim decided to abolish transit duties altogether on all trade for two years. Indeed, the Council of Fort William was divided in its opinion about Mir Qasim. While Vansittart and Warren Hastings tried their best to work out an understanding with the Nawab, the arrogance and the hostility of the rest gained ground. The trade of the English private merchants was to get a preferential treatment in comparison with and at the
39 P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: the British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1976), passim. 40 The activity of the private European and his gumàshta in the interior of Bengal was brought to the notice of the Nawab by his officials. In his correspondence with the English governor in Calcutta, Mir Qasim sent copies of those letters, quoted extensively in Henry Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal 1760–1764 (Calcutta, 1976), pp. 49, 148–49, 191–92, 193–94, 256, 358, 431.
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cost of that carried on by other European and Indian merchants. This was the message carried by the embassy of Amyatt and Hay sent on behalf of the Calcutta Council to Monghyr.41 In all this, the role of the English acting in private interest seems to have been the decisive factor in guiding the relationship between Mir Qasim and the English. At the same time, as Ray has recently pointed out, the numerous changes effected in the administration through appointments and re-appointments since Mir Qasim came to power, resulted in the promotion of a group of strongly antiEnglish officers to all key positions. Raj Ballabh, who replaced Ram Narayan as the nà"ib nàΩim (deputy governor) of Patna was replaced by Nobit Roy to be finally replaced by the commander Mir Mahdi Khan. The English considered both Muhammad Ali Beg, the 'àmil of Dhaka and Mir Sher Ali Khan, the faujdàr of Purnia as obstacles to their trade. While Saiyid Jalal Bukhari, the faujdàr of Rangamati resisted free private trade of the English to Assam, his counterpart Abid Ali Khan at Rangpur also insisted on the English paying duties. These officials, according to Ray, collectively represented the “hostility of the Mughal imperial class to the English and they expressed the patriotic Mughal reaction to the humiliations heaped upon them by the English. . . .”.42 What role did Gurgin have to play in this controversy over the unlimited private trade of the English? Though Hay thought that the idea of remitting the duties on the entire trade of Bengal originated with the Armenians or some others interested in prejudicing the affairs of the English in Bengal, he did not specifically name Gurgin or any one else.43 During 1762 and the early part of 1763 when the English were constantly protesting against the attempts made by Mir Qasim and his officials to bring the English to book, the name of Gurgin Khan appears twice in connection with the private trade of the English, although Gurgin himself was not directly
41 While the Narrative abounds in examples of such arrogance, quoting one of them here will not be out of place. Councillor Johnstone, for instance, thought that Mir Qasim was anxious to “to ruin our [English] trade, superiority and influence through the country, by reducing us on a footing with all other European or foreign traders, and even with the very Bengal inhabitants” (Vansittart, Narrative, p. 370). 42 Rajat Kanta Ray, “Colonial Penetration and the Initial Resistance: the Mughal Ruling Class, the English East India Company and the Struggle for Bengal 1756–1800”, The Indian Historical Review, 12, 1–2 (1985–1986), pp. 1–105. 43 Vansittart, Narrative, pp. 369–70.
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involved in either of the incidents. In January 1762 Ellis, the chief of the English factory at Patna complained that Khoja Anton, the 'àmil of Panchmahal and kinsman of Gurgin, declared the dastak sent by Ellis for a consignment of turmeric purchased for the English near Mow invalid and issued another in stead under the seal of Khoja Gregory.44 A few days later the same Anton was charged for having seized five maunds of saltpetre from the Company’s factory and sent it to Monghyr.45 It is not clear if Gurgin carried on his commercial activity after he became the commander-in-chief of Mir Qasim’s army. But an interesting piece of evidence shows that Gurgin—at least on one occasion—lent out money to the Dutch. The Dutch Director and Council at Hooghly noted in 1763 that their officials at Patna had borrowed a sum of 77,750 guilders from Khoja Gregory in 1761. While they instructed their officials to pay back the amount, Khoja Petrus and Khoja Barsick sent a letter to the Director requesting him to either transfer the sum together with the interest to their credit or pay it to Khoja Minas Elias, the father in law of Petrus residing at Hooghly.46
Gurgin and Mir Qasim’s battles against the English However, the role of Gurgin was more crucial in connection with the army and its achievements. Mir Qasim’s army was now disciplined and trained and had mastered the latest technology available to the opponents. Already in the beginning of 1763 Gurgin undertook an expedition against Nepal in order to make a trial of the troops and the artillery. It seems that the Nawab’s friend Ali Ibrahim Khan had opposed the idea and suggested that if an expedition had to be undertaken, it would be wise to take a body of English troops along. But this advice went unheeded and while the Nawab encamped at Betia, Gurgin set out alone at the head of his own troops and ascended the pass leading to Nepal. In a sharp engagement with the
44 Khoja Anton, a resident of Mulky, had been born in Delhi (Vansittart, Narrative, pp 141–2). 45 Vansittart, Narrative, pp. 143–6. 46 NA, VOC 3074, “Letter from the Director and Council at Hooghly to the Governor-General and Council in Batavia, 10 December 1763”, ff. 727–8.
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army of Nepal, Gurgin lost many of his men but was able to repulse the enemy in the end. His army managed to reach the summit of the ascent where they halted at the nightfall. But when the troops were resting, the Nepalese launched a surprise attack with stones, arrows and musket-balls creating a great havoc that forced the Mughal troops to descend back to the bottom of the pass. According to Ghulam Husain, Gurgin was dumbfounded at this disgrace and was so deeply embarrassed that he went back to the camp of the Nawab only after he was persuaded by Ali Ibrahim Khan, dispatched by the Nawab to fetch the chief of his army. This expedition to Nepal was perhaps an indication of what could be expected from the army of Mir Qasim at the end of the day. The army of the Nawab was numerically superior to that of the English.47 Yet, when it came to the actual encounters between the armies of Mir Qasim and the English during 1763–64, the Mughal army could not stand in the face of the enemy. It is not difficult, as we have seen above, to blame Gurgin, the commander-in-chief of Mir Qasim’s army. It is remarkable that neither Mir Qasim nor Gurgin was physically present to command the troops at the places where the battles were being fought. After Patna was seized by Ellis, the chief of the English factory at that place, Gurgin sent a force under the command of Margar for the assistance of Mir Mahdi Khan, the governor of Patna. Together with Mir Nasser, who commanded the rocket-men and commanders Jafar Khan and Alam Khan, Margar, at the head of six regiments of disciplined Telingas and eight cannons, pursued the English and re-captured Patna.48 All the Englishmen of the lodge at Patna including Ellis, Hay and Lushington were taken captive to Monghyr. Afterwards, the detachment that Mir Qasim sent to Murshibadad with orders to advance towards Katwa, was led by commanders Jafar Khan, Alam Khan and Mir Haibat al-Lah while general Taqi Khan, the faujdàr of Birbhum was to join them at the head of his own troops.49
47 Following the estimate given by Raymond, Mir Qasim had about 16,000 cavalry and 25,000 infantry one half of which were trained in the English manner (Seir, Vol. 2, p. 425 fn. 227). 48 Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 473–5; E. Cotton, “The Memoirs of Gentil”, Proceedings of the Indian Historical Records Commission (Rangoon, 1928), p. 10. 49 Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 476–7.
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Jealous of Taqi Khan, Saiyid Muhammad Khan, the deputy governor of Murshidabad, who was expected to supply military provisions to the commanders, was not only slow and reluctant in complying with his duty but made sure at the same time that the three commanders asserted their independence of the general. Consequently, when those commanders requested Taqi Khan for some of his musketeers, he sent them five hundred musketeers under one Feramorz, a slave officer under his command. According to Ghulam Husain, Taqi Khan, liberal and generous in nature, was an extremely talented general who treated men under his command as fellow companions. But later, when Taqi Khan himself decided to oppose the march of the English at Katwa, he did not ask the refractory commanders to follow him, and they also remained “motionless in their encampment”, as “mere spectators” of a show. Thus the battle of Katwa, which for a brief moment became critical for the English, was fought by the troops of Taqi Khan alone, who lost his life in the battlefield.50 For the next encounter, Mir Qasim, disheartened at the death of general Taqi Khan, sent orders to Haibat al-Lah to make a stand at the plains of Suti while he sent another detachment comprising six to seven thousand horses under the command of Asad al-Lah Khan, the faujdàr of Narhat-Simai, and seven or eight regiments of Telingas and sixteen cannons under the charge of Margar and Sumroo. They were joined by Mir Nasser at the head of a body of rocket-men and the forces of Sher Ali Khan, the governor of Purnia. This time Mir Qasim warned the commanders against dissension and jealousy and ordered them to fight in concert. During the time of the engagement Margar and Sumroo were in the middle. Asad al-Lah, at the head of a large body of cavalry and infantry, was on their right while Sher Ali Khan took position on the left. The English seemed to gain a superiority over the troops of Margar and Sumroo at the very start. While both the armies were advancing, Mir Badr al-Din, one of Asad al-Lah’s men, parted company with the main body and advanced further at the head of eighty horse. He was assisted by the rocket-men under Mir Nasser and together they engaged the English with such a force that a battalion of the English Telingas was forced to retreat. But Mir Badr al-Din lost most of his
50
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 481–5.
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men in this charge, and intimidated by the loss suffered by Mir Badr al-Din and his troops, neither Asad al-Lah nor any of his men made a single move. By this time, Margar and Sumroo were seen to be retreating. The English had been nearly cornered at Suti but the failure of Asad al-Lah Khan to make a timely charge gave the enemy the chance to regroup, disengage their artillery and present a regular front with fresh courage and reinforcement that brought them victory.51 It was only after this debacle that Mir Qasim himself went to Champanagar to review his troops destined for the defence of Udhuanala. By that time Kamgar Khan, the zamìndàr of NarhatSimai, had joined the camp of Mir Qasim through the mediation of Ali Ibrahim Khan. When Gurgin Khan proposed that Kamgar should join the troops at Udhuanala, Kamgar, a military talent, replied that there were enough troops at that place already and what was required was a commander-in-chief who would be able to lead all the troops to fight in concert. His next remark insinuated that Gurgin lacked military knowledge and experience. The latter interpreted this as Kamgar’s unwillingness to proceed to Udhuanala as he was waiting for an opportunity to turn against the Nawab. When Mir Qasim approached Ali Ibrahim on this issue, the latter emphasized the need of the presence of a commander-in-chief at Udhuanala and maintained that the only suitable person to proceed to that place at that moment was Gurgin himself. Mir Qasim replied that he had no objections to it but when he mentioned it to Gurgin, the latter pointed out that he did not want to leave Mir Qasim at a time of utter confusion. There was, however, no less confusion among the large number of troops and artillery at Udhuanala. The artillery was commanded by Arathoon, Margar and Sumroo while the other troops were commanded by Asad al-Lah Khan, Muhammad Naqi Khan, Alam Khan, Jafar Khan, Haibat al-Lah, Mir Himmat Ali, the newcomer Mirza Najaf Khan and others. All the commanders were at the head of their respective corps and according to Ghulam Husain, they were so confident about the natural strength of the entrenchment at Udhuanala, that they neglected their duty. Being tipped off by an English soldier who had earlier deserted the English camp for service with Mir
51
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 485–9.
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Qasim and was now willing to go back to the former, the English were able to find a ford through the lake and morass leading to the otherwise impregnable Mughal camp. When the entire entrenchment was fast asleep, the English waded through the marsh and took the Mughal camp by surprise.52 A cursory look at the way the battles were fought is enough to suggest the lack of overall co-ordination among the troops in the Mughal camp. We have noted above that neither Mir Qasim nor Gurgin Khan were present on the scene of warfare. Why Gurgin, in spite of being the supreme commander of the army, was not willing to supervise the troops at the most crucial moments, can only be guessed. While the argument he put forward—that he could not leave Mir Qasim unattended at a time when confusion, perfidy and treason reigned—cannot be totally ignored,53 it cannot be denied that, notwithstanding the fact that Gurgin was a natural military talent, he lacked experience. That was evident during the expedition to Nepal. If we accept, as all the authorities except for Ghulam Husain have maintained, that Gurgin was a military genius, then he must have realised after the disaster in Nepal that his army was not yet ready to face the English army. Did Gurgin want to save himself from repeatedly facing similar embarrassments? If that was indeed the case, then it would explain why Gurgin asked Mir Qasim to have patience in the face of the insolent and aggressive attitude of the English. Mir Qasim himself also did not lead the troops fighting under different commanders.54 52
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 495–9. This confusion was aptly summarised by Ghulam Husain: “. . . there subsisted everywhere such a strange appearance of double dealing, and discordance, that I could not help wavering in my conduct. My brother in the castle, and in high office with the Emperor; Murly-dur and Ram-narain, in appearance my friends, and in fact my enemies; myself highly obliged to both, and unable to make a proper return; Mir-cassem-qhan in his heart enemy to Ram-narain; the Emperor dissatisfied and uneasy in the castle; the English at variance amongst themselves; Mcguire siding with Vansittart and the Nawab; and the Major with Mr. Hay, being closely united with Amyatt, in opposing Vansittart, and also in supporting Ram-narain against Mir-cassem-qhan: such a confused scene was puzzling. . . .” (Seir, Vol. 2, p. 411). 54 William Bolts noted that the army of Mir Qasim was well paid, disciplined and accoutred. . . . and “had he himself the bravery to animate his troops properly by his own presence in the field, it is more than probable that the English company would have been left, from that day [the battle of Suti was fought] without a single foot of ground in those provinces”. See his Considerations on India Affairs, particularly respecting the Present State of Bengal and its Dependencies (London, 1772), p. 43. 53
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It is important to note that it was only before the battle of Udhuanala that the question of bringing all the troops under a combined leadership was raised for the first time. Again, the issue was brought up neither by Mir Qasim nor Gurgin, but by Kamgar Khan, who had joined the camp at the last moment. When Ibrahim Ali Khan also emphasised the need for a commander-in-chief, Mir Qasim and his general agreed that they had thought in the same line. But then Gurgin said he would not leave the Nawab and there was no one who could be sent in his place! Devoid of overall command, the Mughal camp resembled a conglomeration of different units—each troop fighting under its respective leader bound as if by a patron-client relationship. Apart from the tension resulting from the clash of interest between the Mughal aristocracy and the Armenians and other Europeans, the rivalry and jealousy existing among the Mughal elites made sure that there was no unity of purpose. Not only that, the attitude of the Mughal commanders clearly reflected this lack of unity and the internal rivalries. Whether it was Taqi Khan during the battle of Katwa or Mirza Najaf Khan during the battle of Udhuanala, Mughal commanders put up lone performances. Moreover, troops, trained and disciplined in the time of peace, had no experience of putting up a resistance in the face of cannon shots. The musketeers of Taqi Khan, reputed all over the country, were terrified—most of them wounded or slain facing the firing of the English.55 Awe-struck at the carnage caused by the English on the plains of Suti, Asad al-Lah and his troops were unable to make a move.56 Soon after the engagement started at that place, the troops of Margar and Sumroo were outdone by the English.57 Unlike the A. K. Maitreya, the biographer of Mir Qasim suggested that the Nawab, though he depended on commanders of foreign origin in order to achieve his goal, he did not really trust them. Gurgin was the right hand of the Nawab, but he stayed back at Monghyr in order to advise the Nawab while Muslim commanders had to fight for Mir Qasim in his battle against the English. According to Maitreya, there was a hidden agenda behind this scheme; the English did not declare the war against Mir Qasim depending merely on their military force. Mir Qasim did not appear on the battlefield because he did not want to hazard his own person through the betrayal of his officials (Maitreya, Mir Qasim, pp. 148–9). 55 Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 482–4. 56 Seir, Vol. 2, p. 488. In the opinion of Tapanmohan Chattopadhyay, had Gurgin got two years more to complete his military reforms, it would have been tough for even powerful warriors like the English to defeat them in an encounter (Chattopadhyay Palasir par Buxar, p. 132). 57 Seir, Vol. 2, p. 487.
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officials of Mir Qasim, who, according to Ray “collectively represented the hostility of the Mughal imperial class to the English” by fighting the attempts of the English to monopolize the trade of the country, the Mughal warriors fighting for Mir Qasim failed to present a united front.58
Murder most foul Yet Gurgin Khan was murdered, apparently for his involvement in a conspiracy with the English against Mir Qasim. Quite a few contemporaries have left an eye witness account of the assassination as it took place. According to Ghulam Husain, who was in the Nawab’s camp, the incident took place in August 1763 when the Nawab was on his way from Monghyr to Patna after the battle of Udhuanala. One night, as it was extremely hot, Gurgin was outside his tent when two or three Mughal troopers approached him and asked him something about their pay. The general answered in an angry manner, and the soldiers retorted back. At this, Gurgin got angry and ordered that those troopers be put under arrest. He had hardly finished those words when those men attacked and struck him thrice with their swords and fled on horseback. Margar, the Armenian general fired at them a few pieces of cannon which raised an alarm leading Mir Qasim to take to the fields. The confusion that ensued, struck a terror into Mir Qasim’s camp resulting in multitudes of frightened people fleeing on all sides. The uproar came to subside only at midnight when a servant of Ghulam Husain came to know that Gurgin Khan had been slain.59 Ghulam Husain seemed to imply that the death of Gurgin in the hands of the Mughal troopers was almost predestined for a person who was ill-tempered and was always on “ill terms with all the world”. However Gentil, the companion of Gurgin who watched his friend being killed, minced no words about the fact that Gurgin had been a victim of jealousy and slander.
58
Ray, “Colonial Penetration”. Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 502–4. The message that Ghulam Husain received (“. . . . it is Gurghin-qhan’s corpse. We carry it to the fields for burial. It is the Nawab’s order”) seems to convey that Mir Qasim had ordered the corpse to be buried. Raymond, the translator of Seir, thought it rather implied that Gurgin had been killed by the Nawab’s order. 59
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According to him the commander-in-chief was aware of the fact that there was a conspiracy against him. An attempt had already been made on Gurgin’s life a couple of days before he was actually murdered. The comments made by Mir Qasim at the news of the death of his commander-in-chief convinced Gentil that the Nawab, suspicious of Gurgin Khan’s activity, brought an end to his life.60 What was this conspiracy then supposed to be brewed by Gurgin under the instigation of the English? When Mir Qasim decided to detain Hay at Monghyr (after the failure of the embassy of Amyatt and Hay mentioned above) for the security of his 'àmils and the people in the hands of the English, the latter thought the Nawab was worried about Khoja Petrus, the brother of Gurgin, and recommended immediate securing of Petrus.61 Soon after Mir Jafar was restored to the throne, he requested the council of Fort William to send Khoja Petrus with the army to Bihar for taking up correspondence with Gurgin. The council resolved to do so with the provision that Petrus would remain under the charge of Major Adams who would keep an eye on him.62 It is evident from a letter written by Petrus in November of the same year that under the instructions of Adams, he wrote two letters to the Armenian generals Margar and Arathoon intimating them of the favours and protection received by the Armenians from the English and pointing out that Armenians should reciprocate the same friendliness towards the English.63 Gentil, however, informed that the English
60 The account of Gurgin’s murder left by Gentil is essentially similar. Gentil, however, noted that there was only one Mughal trooper who attacked Gurgin. He threatened to massacre all the Armenians attached to Gurgin’s camp too. The Armenians were able to forestall the plan of the Mughal trooper to fire a piece of cannon on the tent. The rumour had it that the English had attacked Gurgin’s camp. When Gentil informed him of the death of Gurgin, Mir Qasim seems to have looked affected, though he said “kaire salla” or “all goes well”, which gave Gentil the impression that Mir Qasim had Gurgin murdered (Oldham, “The murder of Gurgin Khan”). David Lorenzen has recently found new documents relating to the death of Gurgin Khan left by the Capuchin fathers based at Betia. The account of Gurgin’s death presented in these documents is similar to the one left by Gentil. I am grateful to Gautam Bhadra for giving me this information though it has not been possible for me to see Lorenzen’s paper while preparing this essay. 61 Vansittart, Narrative, p. 481. 62 Vansittart, Narrative, pp. 503–4, 507. A few members of the council of Fort William were of opinion that Petrus was Mir Qasim’s spy in Calcutta (Long, Selections, no. 647, p. 314). 63 This letter to Major Adams has been quoted in Seth, Armenians in India, pp. 341–2.
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had sent proposals to Gurgin to leave the Nawab’s camp and save the life of his brother, a prisoner in the English camp. Gurgin declined this request saying that he would not abandon Mir Qasim whom he had pledged his faith.64 Mir Qasim was informed by his spies that Gurgin was intriguing with the English. Moreover, it seems Gurgin had advised Mir Qasim to come to an understanding with Mir Jafar.65 Desperate as the Nawab was, he took the extreme measure he had taken, and would later take, against so many people under his charge, to get rid of his trusted minister too. This account of Mir Qasim getting rid of Gurgin Khan fits in very well with the incidents preceding and following the death of the commander-in-chief and the character of the Nawab as noted by contemporaries and later historians. By nature weak and extremely suspicious, Mir Qasim was known for his cruelty. All the members of the nobility imprisoned in the fort of Monghyr were brutally murdered by his order.66 Soon after the death of Gurgin Khan, the Seth brothers were drowned from a tower of the castle of Monghyr. Following the fall of the fort of Monghyr to the English, all the English prisoners arrested in Patna, about fifty in number, were heinously executed by Sumroo.67 Thus the murder of Gurgin was only one in a chain of atrocious acts sanctioned by Mir Qasim. There is, however, one source that throws new light on the assassination of Gurgin Khan. Although reduced in importance after the unsuccesful bid to curb the English at Bedara (1759), the Dutch at Chinsura noted with interest the political and economic aggression of the English in the post-Plassey period. The important role played by the Armenians in the politics of Bengal in this period did not escape the attention of Louis Taillefert, the Director of the Dutch. While preparing his final report in 1763, Taillefert noted that initially Mir Qasim had been falsely charged with the murder of Khoja Gregory. Later it was confirmed that in order to woo the English, the Seth brothers Mahatab Rai and Swarupchand, grandsons of
64 Oldham, “The murder of Gurgin Khan”, p. 222. This has been corroborated by Chattopadhyay (Palasir par Buxar, pp. 174–5). 65 Chattopadhyay, Palasir par Buxar, p. 175. 66 Ram Narayan, the ex nà"ib-nàΩim of Patna, Raj Ballabh and his sons, Ray Rayan Umedh Rai and his son, the zamìndàrs of Tikary, Raja Fateh Singh and Raja Buniyad Singh were some of the persons of distinction put to death by Mir Qasim’s order at this time. 67 Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 504–6.
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Jagatseth Fatehchand, had bribed a few of the troopers of Khoja Gregory to put an end to his life with the idea to create an utter confusion in the affairs of Mir Qasim. The Nawab had the murderers and their adherents killed immediately.68 This could be ignored as a stray piece of information, but it should be taken into consideration that the English had approached Arathoon and Margar at the same time they contacted Gurgin Khan. Why would Mir Qasim have only Gurgin killed, and allow the other two to continue in his service? On the other hand, Ghulam Husain noted on an earlier occasion that an attempt was being made to poison Mir Qasim against Gurgin Khan—for the purpose of creating a breach between the Nawab and his commander-in-chief and causing a disaffection among the troops—through Shahab al-Daula, who had been long in the service of Jagat Seth. Shahab al-Daula informed Mir Qasim that Muhammad Ali, together with the latter’s nephews Barkat Ali and Farhat Ali, both principal commanders in the army of Mir Qasim, had entered into a secret agreement with Gurgin Khan. Confronted by Mir Qasim, Gurgin confirmed that the report was true, but the purpose of the agreement was only to preserve the power of Mir Qasim and those who misinformed Mir Qasim, were trying to poison his mind.69 The problem becomes more interesting in view of the fact that Cotton refers to letters from Ellis, the English chief of Patna implying that the war between Mir Qasim and the English was instigated by the Seth brothers who had undertaken to defray the entire cost.70 The role played by the Seth brothers in the revolution of Plassey was well known. Apprehensive of their role, Mir Qasim had them transported from Murshidabad to Monghyr. The two brothers were received well and set at liberty although spies were set upon them.71
68 NA, Hoge Regering Batavia, 246, “Second memoir concerning Bengal, written by Louis Taillefert, Hooghly, 17 November 1763”. 69 Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 437–8. 70 Cotton, “The Memoirs of Gentil”, p. 11. 71 Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 455–8. The Dutch at Kasimbazar also had the information that Mir Qasim welcomed the Seth brothers and presented them jewels and worth Rs. two lakhs. In return, the Seth brothers paid him a na£ràna of 100,000 gold muhrs (NA, Nederlandse Bezittingen in Voor-Indie, no. 42, “L. Vernet and J.J. Kingma at Kasimbazar to L. Taillefert, 14 May 1763”, not foliated). But according to Cotton Mir Qasim refused to accept the hu»∂ì for Rs. 25 lakhs they offered the Nawab upon their arrival at Monghyr. Not only that, they were put in chains
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Given the role of the Seth brothers in contemporary politics, it was possible for them to arrange the killing of Gurgin with the support of the English. There is another hitch that makes the accepted version of Gurgin’s death a little shaky. Ghulam Husain noted that Gurgin was killed in August.72 It is remarkable that Major Adams, who led the English campaign against Mir Qasim, came to know of the death of Gurgin only in October when he reported the Council of Fort William: . . . . We had a report yesterday that Coja Gregory has been wounded some days ago by a party of his Mogul cavalry who mutinied for want of their pay between Sovagee Guree and Nabob Gunge; it is just now confirmed by a hurcarra arriving from the enemy with this addition that he died next day and that 40 principal people concerned were put to death upon the occasion. . . .73
It is possible that getting accurate information during the war was difficult. Still it is amazing to think that Major Adams got the news of the death of the commander-in-chief of the enemy’s army more than a month after the incident took place. Did he actually get the news that late? Or was that time simply required in order to let the rumour of Mir Qasim killing his trusted right hand sink down before openly confirming the report, in order to make it appear that the English did not have any hand in that affair? At the same time, it is not quite clear why Malleson did not mention Gurgin Khan at all, especially because he mentioned Arathoon, Margar and Samru. This omission appears to be meaningful as one reads on: . . . . the annals of no nation contain records of conduct more unworthy, more mean and more disgraceful, than that which characterised the English government of Calcutta during the three years which followed the removal of Mir Jafar. That conduct is attributable to one cause . . . personal gain by any means and at any cost. It was the same longing which has animated the robber of the northern clime, the
as traitors who had broken their oath to confine their activity to banking operations (Cotton, “The Memoirs of Gentil”). 72 The exact date is, however, not mentioned (Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 500–2). Citing Khojamall’s work, Seth maintains that Gurgin died on August 11, 1763, after the battle of Udhuanala (Seth, Armenians in India, p. 400). According to Tapanmohan Chattopadhyay, Gurgin died on the day Major Adams arrived at Palkipur before the battle of Udhuanala (Chattopadhyay, Palasir par Buxar, p. 177). 73 The letter was written on 3 October and read at the Council on 10 October 1763 (Long, Selections, no. 681, p. 333).
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pirate of the southern sea, which has stimulated individuals to robbery, even to murder. In point of morality, the members of the governing clique of Calcutta from 1761 to 1763, Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Warren Hastings excepted, were not one whit better than the perpetrators of such deeds.74
No doubt part of this statement concerned the unlimited private trade of the English. But his choice of the word “murder” attracts attention as on the one hand it is not known if the members of the Calcutta Council were responsible for committing any murder during this time and there is evidence, on the other, that Gurgin Khan was assassinated by unknown troopers under shady circumstances. Mir Qasim had become a source of harassment for the English and their allies like the Seth brothers. It was common knowledge that Mir Qasim depended on the advice of Gurgin in all important affairs. Removing Gurgin from the scene would be like taking out the poison-fang of the venomous snake. With Mir Jafar on the throne, the Seth brothers and the English could again pursue their self interest as before. Did Malleson come across something tangible pointing to the involvement of the English in the death of Khoja Gregory? That would explain his total silence about the commander-in-chief of Mir Qasim. The steps that Mir Qasim took since his accession to the throne, starting from transferring his capital to Monghyr to reorganising the army, to declaring the entire trade of Bengal duty free, were all very well calculated to get even with the English. It is difficult to match these measures with the indiscriminate killing of the prisoners—both indigenous and European—and the murder of Khoja Gregory— which remain an enigma. Unveiling the mystery behind the death of Gurgin Khan will throw more light on the political intrigues of the time.
74
Malleson, Decisive Battles, pp. 141–2, emphasis mine.
TWO CAPTAINS OF THE JAWNPUR SULTANATE Simon Digby
1. JWKA, the Bachgotis and the fortress of Chaund The history of Jawnpur has to be reconstructed from very sparse materials. For the core of the revolt which temporarily dispossessed the Lodis and their Afghan followers of the capital of Jawnpur shortly after the accession of Sultan Sikandar (1489 AD) two names have previously been available from the earliest surviving sources regarding the leadership and the course of events. According to Mushtaqi (by a few years our earliest source, writing in old age nearly 90 years after the events) the uprising of armed peasantry in the territory of Jawnpur had a leader called JWKA (which can be vocalised in a number of ways of which Joga or Chawka seem most probable).1 Our next available source of a few years later (and the first to attempt to work out a chronology of the reigns of the Lodi Sultans) is Nizam al-Din Ahmad. According to Nizam al-Din Ahmad, the revolt was of “the zamìndàrs of the province of Jawnpur, and the Bachgotis and other men, close to one lakh (100,000) of cavalry and footsoldiers gathered together”.2 The synoptic “Indo-Afghan” histories of the Lodi and Sur Sultanates of Delhi derive from an initial mélange of Mushtaqi’s anecdotes and 1 Rizq al-Lah Mushtaqi, Wàqi'àt-i Mushtàqì, BL Or. 1929, pp. 20–2, Arabic enumeration; trans. I.H. Siddiqui (Delhi, 1993), pp. 25–7; tr. S.A.A. Rizvi, Uttar Taimur Kàlìn Bhàrat (Aligarh, 1958), pp. 107–9. There is no edited text of the Wàqi'àt of Mushtaqi, and there will be difficulties in preparing such a text from two known manuscripts representing different recensions; but the Hindi and English translations noted above have been published, and the passage is reproduced verbatim in Abd al-Lah, Ta"rìkh-i Dà"ùdì, lithograph. ed. S.A. Rashid (Aligarh, 1954), with subsequently printed introduction by I.H. Siddiqui. Unfortunately the Aligarh lithograph omits the text of a folio at this point—p. 45, line 16—but collation of a manuscript of Ta"rìkh-i Dà"ùdì (Mountstuart Elphinstone Ms. now Digby 158). S.H. Hodivala had no access to Mushtaqi, and his conjecture that Abd al-Lah corrupted bàchgotìàn in transcription to JWKA must be rejected (see Studies in Indo-Muslim History (Bombay, 1939), I, p. 470). 2 Nizam al-Din Ahmad, Tabaqàt-i Akbarì, text ed. B. De (Calcutta, 1937), I. p. 318; trans. B. De and B. Prashad (Calcutta, 1911), I, p. 359.
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Nizam al-Din Ahmad’s attempt at a chronological narrative, with subsequent additions by later writers that are usually of negligible value for historical interpretation.3 In considering the nature of the revolt against the Indo-Afghans in the territories of Jawnpur there are two pieces of evidence that we can add, which lie outside the main historiographical tradition—the first from a Sufi biographical work, and the second from a collection of orally-derived anecdotes regarding the Indo-Afghans and their campaigns which owe nothing to the synoptic accounts. With these disparate sources added, a case is made that effective military manpower could be raised from the armed peasantry of Awadh at the date of the rebellion to establish an effective administration over the heartland of the Jawnpur Sultanate north of the Ganga, and that this military force could be deployed by a leader who had also established a defensive military base south of the Ganga. Muhammad Kabir in the Afsàna-i Shàhàn-i Hind provides an anecdote describing a “great Rajput amìr” of Husain Shah Sharqi, who from the course of events must be identical with the chieftain called JWKA by Mushtaqi and “Abd al-Lah” of the Ta"rì¶-i Dà"ùdì.4 This amir—according to Muhammad Kabir—was in possession of the fortress of Chaund, and his writ south of the Ganga—as we are told—extended from Chunar in the west to the Son river in the east. The Rajput amir had been appointed by Husain Shah Sharqi to command this fortress, which lay on the route of re-entry from South Bihar into the territories of the Jawnpur Sultanate which he had lost:5
3 Muhammad Kabir, Afsàna-i Shàhàn-i Hind (Storey No. 675), BL, Add. 24,409, ff. 25v–27v; Hindi trans. by Rizvi, Uttar Taimur, I, pp. 373–4; see also S. Digby, “The Indo-Persian Historiography of the Lodi Sultans”, in F. Grimal (ed.), Les sources et le temps (Pondichéry, 2001), pp. 243–64. Rizvi wrongly amends Mubàrà (clearly pointed in the manuscript) to Miyànrà. The forms Mubàrà for Mubàrak and Az Humàyùn for A'zam Humàyùn (Sarvani) are evidence of the independent oral transmission of the anecdotes. 4 For the identification with JWKA. see below. 5 This leaves open questions of conflict or competition of this “great Rajput amir” appointed by the Sharqi Sultan with the Ujjainiyas and tbe Baghelas with their strongholds at Baksar and at Bandhogarh. From Muhammad Kabir’s anecdote there was a boundary between JWKA and the Baghelas before the fords or ferries of Kantat and of Jhusi/Arail. Control of the latter played an important part in Baghela regional politics at this time and later in the sixteenth century. As in the case of the Baghelas the area of influence could be extensive but dominance even over the smaller core area guarded by their main stronghold was often tenuous.
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It is said that Mubara Khan had crossed the Ganga and was attacking the fortress of Khairigarh. Chunar was also close and he resolved to attack in that direction also. The news reached Sultan Husain in Bihar. There was a Rajput Amir appointed by Sultan Husain in Chaund. He had control of all places from Chunar to the river Son. There was also a ¶wàja (eunuch?) of Sultan Husain in Chunar. That ¶wàja wrote to Sultan Husain that Mubara Khan had made an attack on them. Then Sultan Husain made ready a great army, and sent a message to that Rajput saying “Fight Mubara Khan if it is within your power”!
Muhammad Kabir then describes the unsuccessful assault upon the fortress by “Mubara Khan”—Mubarak Khan Nohani, commander of the Lodi forces on the south-western side of the territories of the former Sultanate of Jawnpur: Then the Rajput got all his soldiers ready and made a stand. Holding a bìra of pàn and a face-cloth in his hand, he told his soldiers: “Let him who intends to die with me take this bìra and face-cloth and swear that he intends to die!” All the soldiers took up the bìra and swore. Finally the Rajput made his army ready and sent it forth. He despatched footsoldiers in the front and the rear to whom he had given rockets and handguns.6 Behind the footsoldiers he placed “must” elephants. Behind the elephants he drew up the lines of his own army (cavalry?). It was then ready for battle against Mubara Khan. The battle with Mubara Khan took place on the western side of Chunar.
“Mubara Khan” was defeated, and during his retreat he was made prisoner (at the ferry of Jhusi) by the Baghela ruler of Bhatta. According to Muhammad Kabir: Such a battle took place that Mubara Khan himself was wounded and many of the Afghans and the rest of their army were killed. Mubara Khan’s army was routed. As Mubara Khan was fleeing after this defeat, there was a Raja on the road called Bhaid (i.e. Bhaidachandra of Bhatta) and he became his captive.
We may collate Muhammad Kabir’s account with the sum total of information on the early course of the rebellion in Jawnpur territories
6 This reference to firearms may not be anachronistic. Iqtidar Alam Khan, in a study of explosive weapons in medieval India now in the press at OUP, New Delhi, has argued a case for the diffusion of explosive weaponry of far-eastern origin from eastern India during this period, which enhanced the fighting potential of Purbiya soldiers. One may note that Muhammad Kabir gives a more convincing description of the order of battle than Mushtaqi does of the later engagement at Chaund.
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from Nizam al-Din Ahmad and Mushtaqi, whose contrasting narratives we present in chronological sequence: 1. “Sikandar Lodi after returning from Gwalior, spent 24 days in Dehli” (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). “After conquering Bayana. he was in Dehli, and on the third day news came that Mubarak Khan Nohani having fought against Joga Hindu had taken to flight after defeat. The Sultan set off instantly eastwards from the polo-field” (Mushtaqi). “The year of this expedition was 897 [November 1491– October 1492]” (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). Comment: The instant setting out of the Sultan from his game on the polo-field is formulaic and used in other anecdotes. The immediate departure of the Sultan when the news of Mubarak Khan’s defeat reached him is unlikely, and. as we shall demonstrate below, chronologically impossible. An interval, probably of months, must have elapsed after their victory over Mubarak Khan south of the Ganga at Chaund before the insurgents were in control of central Jawnpur territories around the capital. Evidence, cited below, suggests that insurgents were after this in control of the area around the capital of Jawnpur for a period of several months in AH 896 (November 1490–November 1491), one year previous to the date mentioned by Nizam al-Din Ahmad. 2. “Sher Khan, brother of Mubarak Khan, had attained martyrdom” (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). Comment: As the Indo-Afghans fought in tribal contingents, it is likely that Sher Khan was one of the casualties in this first engagement outside Chaund. His principal widow remained at the Nohani base at Karra, and was later married to Sultan Sikandar.7 3. “Mubarak Khan when crossing the ferry of Jhusi Prayag was taken prisoner by the boatmen. Ray Bhaid (Bhaidachandra) of Bhatta, when he became aware of this, took him from his captors and held him prisoner” (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). “JWKA pursued Mubarak Khan and made him a prisoner” (Mushtaqi). Comment: In contrast to Mushtaqi’s recollections, Nizam al-Din Ahmad’s account of Mubarak Khan’s capture by Bhaidachandra, the chief-
7
Nizam al-Din Ahmad, text, I, p. 318; trans., I, p. 361.
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tain of Bhatta, is in agreement with that of Muhammad Kabir. Without Muhammad Kabir’s information it would not be clear in which direction Mubarak Khan was crossing the Ganga, and historians have been under the impression that he was crossing from north to south. Yet if Mubarak Khan had been defeated in Awadh in the vicinity of Jawnpur, after a retreat to his base across the upper Ganga at Karra, it is difficult to see why he should then have fled southwards to the crossing of the sangam at Prayag (Allahabad), rather than in a north-westerly direction towards Kanauj. A south to north crossing also follows the strict order of Nizam al-Din Ahmad’s own words—“Jusi [ Jhusi]—Prayag”. Muhammad Kabir makes clear that Mubarak Khan was fleeing along the south bank of the Ganga to the first easy crossing for an army which was not in possession of its own fleet of watercraft. In parallel circumstances this is also the route of the retreat of Humayun after his defeat at Chausa in June 1539, misunderstood by Abul Fazl and some modern historians but clearly from the evidence of Jawhar and Gulbadan Begam on the south bank.8 The river that Humayun crossed on an inflated mussuck (water-sack) on that occasion was the Karamnasa, not the Ganga in monsoon spate. On that occasion also the Baghela ruler (Birbhan/Virabhanu), like his predecessor Bhaidachandra, exercised control over the boatmen of the Arail/Jhusi crossing to Prayag. 4. “Sikandar’s brother Barbak Shah, previously installed as ruler in Jawnpur, ‘becoming aware of the power of these men’, fled to the Afghan war-leader Muhammad Farmuli Kala Pahar at Dariabad” (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). Comment: Dariabad is about 150 kilometres north-west of Jawnpur, near an old route from Lucknow to Ayodhya. The rebels were in control of Rudawli, about 30 km to the south.9
8 Gulbadan Begam, Humàyùn Nàma, ed. and trans. A.S. Beveridge (London, 1902), text, p. 41; trans., pp. 135–6; Jawhar, Ta£kiràt al-Wàqi'àt, BL, Add. 16,711, f. 24v., trans. S.A.A. Rizvi, Humàyùn Kàlìn Bhàrat (Aligarh, 1961), I, p. 608. The decisive detail is Humayun’s order for a bridge over the water to be pulled down to prevent pursuit. A reference to the Ganges by name in Stewart’s old translation is not supported by Mss. 9 Rukn al-Din Quddusi, Latà"if-i Quddùsì (Dehli, 1311/1894); see also S. Digby, “'Abd al-Quddùs Gangohì (1456–1537): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi”, Medieval India: a Miscellany, 3 (1975), pp. 1–66.
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The evidence of a Sufi biographer
One further source provides evidence of the extent of the territory north of the Ganga effected by the rebellion as well as a valuable indication of its chronology. This is the biographical ta£kira of the activities of Shaikh Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537 AD). The author of the Latà"if-i Quddùsì, Rukn al-Din, was a younger son of Abd al-Quddus. Abd al-Quddus was born at Rudawli in central Awadh, and spent the first three and a half decades of his life there. On account of this rebellion of kàfirs (non-Muslims) he left Rudawli and settled some hundreds of miles away, at Shahabad in the Panjab, where he remained until close to the time of Babur’s invasion.10 Before the death of Sultan Buhlul Lodi Abd al-Quddus had gained the allegiance of an influential Afghan chieftain, Umar Khan Sarvani. Umar Khan then played a major part in the succession of Sikandar to the throne in 1489 AD.11 After this Rudawli passed into the hands of “the kàfirs”. We have cited Nizam al-Din Ahmad’s description of the rebels as “zamìndàrs, Bachgotis and other men”. The predominance of the Bachgotis fits well with the geographical location of Rudawli, a few kilometres south of the modern road from Lucknow and Barabanki to Faizabad/Ayodhya. At the end of the sixteenth century Abul Fazl gives the name of the Bachgotis as the dominant caste in Sultanpur, where by far their largest concentration still existed at the time of the census of 1891.12 The capital city of Jawnpur lay southeast of this district and Rudawli to the northwest. About 30 kilometres further in this direction Barbak Shah, displaced from Jawnpur, had taken refuge with the noted Indo-Afghan commander Muhammad Farmuli Kala Pahar (“Black Mountain”) , confronting the rebels until the time of the arrival of Sultan Sikandar. In the passage regarding the emigratlon of Abd al-Quddus, his son makes a reference to the succession of Sultan Sikandar, and continues:13 10
Latà"if-i Quddùsì, pp. 30–1, 64; Digby, “'Abd al-Quddùs Gangohì”, pp. 9,10. Firishta, Ta"rì¶, (Bombay, 1831), I, pp. 327–8; discussed in S. Digby, “The Indo-Pers1an Historiography”, pp. 256–8. 12 Abul Fazl, À"ìn-i Akbarì. trans. H.S. Jarrett, rev. J. Sarkar (Calcutta, 1949), p. 185; W. Crooke, The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), pp. 95–6. 13 Latà"if-i Quddùsì, p. 31. 11
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In the direction of Hindostan (i.e. Awadh) there was a prevalence ( ∞alaba) of the kàfirs. In the pargana of Rudawli there was an administration ('amal ) of the kàfirs. The customs of Islam were discarded and in the bazaar the flesh of the pig was being sold. Hazrat-i Qutbi (Abd al-Quddus) was vexed (dilgìr shud ) and came away.
Abd al-Quddus sent a servitor (¶àdim) of his own to Umar Khan Sarvani, who was in the camp of Sultan Sikandar at Nakhna.14 Umar Khan then invited Abd al-Quddus to settle at Shahabad west of the Jamuna, where his family held property. Abd al-Quddus settled and remained there until more than three and a half decades later “the Afghan monarchy” (bàdshàhì-yi Af∞àn) was overthrown by Babur.15 Perhaps the most noteworthy statement in this passage is that Rudawli was under an “administration” ('amal ) of kàfirs; but this should not be a matter for surprise. From the historical traditions among the Bachgotis collected in the nineteenth century it is evident that they were a dominant “Rajput” group who had been associated with the extension of the governmental framework of Muslim power in the Gangetic plain, possibly since the thirteenth century.16 William Crooke conjectured that they had moved eastwards on the Gangetic plain, not driven forward by Muslim armies, but settling in the wake of Muslim conquests. One of the two dominant lineages among the Bachgotis turned Muslim at an unspecfied early date, but was still in the late nineteenth century administering the tilak to chiefs of subordinate groups. The presence in strength of the Bachgotis around Sultanpur—a town founded by and named after the Jawnpur Sultans—and in the vicinity of Jawnpur itself would suggest that the Bachgoti leaders, like the Ujjainiya and Baghela chieftains, were major suppliers of military manpower to the Sultans. Hence the statement put into the mouth of Sultan Husain Sharqi—by Mushtaqi and Abd al-Lah—that JWKA was his servant.17 Rukn al-Din also provides a synchronism by which we can revise the solitary date for the campaign given by Nizam al-Din Ahmad, and suggest a lengthier chronology for the course of events of the Jawnpur insurgency against the Afghans. Rukn al-Din states that he was himself born “after the move to Shahabad, after/another/year (ba"d az àmadan bi-Shàhàbàd ba"d-i yak salè ); and he gives his date of 14 15 16 17
Ibid. Latà"if-i Quddùsì, p. 64. Crooke, The Tribes and Castes, pp. 93–4. Nawkar-i man ast; see below.
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birth as 5 Jumada I, 896 (c. 4 April 1491).18 This implies that Abd al-Quddus must have settled in Shahabad not later than the early months of 1490. Before this we have to fit in the crossing of the Ganga northward by JWKA, the spread of insurgency in a region extending 150 kilometres from Jawnpur through Sultanpur and beyond Rudawli, and the establishment there of “kàfir administration” and then time for Shaikh Abd al-Quddus to make up his mind to leave, send an emissary to Sultan Sikandar’s camp and travel with his family and Sufi followers some hundreds of kilometres to Shahabad. This suggests a date of before midwinter 1489 for the initial disaster of the rout of Mubarak Khan outside Chaund. Sikandar Lodi ascended the throne on 17 Shaban 894 (c. 9 September 1489).19 This allows perhaps fifteen months in which must be fitted Sultan Sikandar’s early struggles against his kin, and particularly the war against Barbak Shah and his earlier visit to Jawnpur. Nizam al-Din Ahmad also gives 897 (November 1491–October 1492) as the date of the end of the siege of the great fortress of Bayana, which the same author repeats when he describes Sikandar’s eastward march some weeks later to suppress the rebellion.20 Both writers are agreed that one event followed the other, and there is no reason why the date should not be correct for both events. But, contrary to the statements of both authors, Sultan Sikandar would have had news of Mubarak Khan’s defeat many months before. Possibly he considered that the situations in Gwalior and Bayana more urgently demanded his attention than what was emerging in the former territories of the Jawnpur sultanate. With this span of time Mushtaqi’s stirring account of Sikandar receiving news of the disaster, then setting out from the polo-field without time to snatch a meal in Khan Jahan’s encampment (dà"ira), and within ten days putting the rebel to flight is manifestly the tall tale we may previously have suspected it to be.21 The swift setting out of Sultan Sikandar on his victorious expedition is a formulaic element in such narratives. Muhammad Kabir—the only narrative source independent of the synoptic histories—tells how Sultan Sikandar set out from the polo-field at Bayana to vanquish not JWKA, but the Jadon chieftains in the hills west of Bayana.22 18 19 20 21 22
Latà"if-i Quddùsì, p. 31. Nizam al-Din Ahmad, trans., I, p. 355. Nizam al-Din Ahmad, trans., I, pp. 359, 360. Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, p. 25. Muhammad Kabir, trans. Rizvi, p. 372.
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The putting down of the rebellion Nizam al-Din Ahmad, after stating that Sikandar spent 24 days at Delhi, presumably mustering his forces, gives no indication of the route which the Sultan took before he crossed the Ganga above modern Kanpur. He may have crossed the Jamuna near Delhi and marched across the Doab: 5. “Sikandar crossed the Ganga and came to Dalamau, where he was joined by Barbak Shah” (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). Comment: We have already had cause to mistrust Mushtaqi’s statement about the speed of Sultan Sikandar’s response. At this point Mushtaqi makes his statement that the Sultan reached the battleground in ten days of forced marches from Delhi. An anecdote in Latà"if-i Quddùsì regarding Shaikh Abd al-Quddus sending a messenger to Sultan Sikandar’s camp at “Nakhna” to contact Umar Khan Sarvani suggests that Sikandar’s progress was an even more leisurely or cautious advance. If “Nakhna” of the lithograph, based on a single manuscript, can be amended to Pilakhna, where the Gakbur Sarvani family later owned property,23 the army would have taken a northern route through the Doab close to the right bank of the Ganga. In this case the crossing of the river near Dalamau, below modern Kanpur but above Karra, appears rather far down the river. Sikandar’s brother Barbak Shah, last heard of in refuge with the Farmuli commander Muhammad Kala Pahar in Dariabad, would have had to come unnecessarily far south-south-west to join Sikandar “with all his Amirs”. That Sikandar’s regrouping at Dalamau took some time is suggested by the detail of the arrival to join the Sultan there (not in Karra) of Mubarak Khan Lohani, now released by the prudent Baghela Raja Bhaidachandra. An alternative route is suggested by Muhammad Kabir.24 The Sultan went down the south bank of the Jamuna, which he crossed at Kalpi, and onwards to Khora (Kora) from which he turned aside to deal with Raja Bhaidu (Bhaidachandra); but this may refer to another expedition. Both Mushtaqi and Nizam al-Din Ahmad are in agreement that in the engagement which took place against the rebels in Awadh north of the Ganga, Sikandar routed a large force of local rebels.
23 24
Latà"if-i Quddùsì; Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, pp. 280–1. Muhammad Kabir, f. 26v; trans. Rizvi, p. 374.
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6. “The forces of the rebels numbered about a lakh [100,000] of footsoldiers and cavalry (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). “When Sikandar Lodi attacked JWKA he had with him three lakhs [300,000] footsoldiers and 15,000 cavalry. Sikandar himself had 500 cavalry who had kept pace with him” (Mushtaqi). Comment: If any value may be attached to such estimates, recorded nearly a century afterwards, Nizam al-Din Ahmad, whose father accompanied Humayun on his campaigns, is to be preferred to Mushtaqi, an octogenarian Mulla with some fame as a raconteur. The earlier battles of the Lodis which occurred before Mushtaqi was born are clearly described by him in largely formulaic terms. It is unlikely that Sultan Sikandar, accompanied by only 500 horse, attacked a huge host. However Mushtaqis statement is valuable for its inclination of the enormous preponderance of footsoldiers among the “armed peasantry” of Awadh.25 Nizam al-Din Ahmad is clear that there was now a major defeat of the rebels at a place whose name is mistranscribed in the manuscripts: The Sultan marched from/Dalamau/to Kathgarh. There the zamìndàrs assembled in large numbers, and offered opposition, but in the end were defeated and many became food for the sword and the rest were dispersed . . . The Sultan then went to Jawnpur.26
Of modern historians both Nirodbhushan Roy and Abdul Halim suggest the reading Kathgarh, which is found in Firishta. Halim adds that there is a small village of that name in Dalamau pargana; but the name is ambiguous, as it means “a wooden stockade”.27 Here Mushtaqi amid his exaggerations contributes his differing mite of information: “Sikandar’s army . . . reached the river Kudi (Gomati)”. The Gomati has the long and meandering course of a river that rises in the Gangetic plain itself. Its source is not far from
25 Cf. Dirk Kolff, Naukar. Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 160–1. 26 Nizam al-Din Ahmad, trans., I, p. 360 and n. 4. The translators propose the identification Kahtar = Katahr, “i.e. the country now known as Rohilkhand”. This is geographically unlikely. 27 N.B. Roy, Niamatullah’s History of the Afghans (Santiniketan, 1938), pp. 74, 139; Abdul Halim, History of the Lodi Sultans of Delhi and Agra (Dhaka, 1961), p. 66.
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Pilibhit and it is already a broad river when it passes through Lucknow. It then flows through Jawnpur and discharges into the Ganga between Benares and Ghazipur. However when Sultan Sikandar was at Dalamau, he had regrouped his army. It was evidently now reinforced by the survivors of the eastern contingents of the Lohanis and Farmulis, and the Amirs of his brother Barbak Shah. The Sultan was intent upon the reconquest of Jawnpur. The point at which his army would strike the river Gomati would be close to Sultanpur, the stronghold of the Bachgotis. The next incident, for which we are dependent on the historicity of the account of Mushtaqi, and following him Abd al-Lah, is a rapid raid by Sultan Sikandar to surprise and kill or capture JWKA on the banks of the Kudi (Gomati). The Sultan advanced beyond the main body of his army with 500 cavalry. According to Mushtaqi: When they reached the river Kudi an informer arrived. They asked him how many kos a way the accursed JWKA was. He replied that he was 7 kos [about 30 kilometres] away. Then the Sultan enquired: “Has he got news of us?” “No”, he replied. Some of the nobles asked /the Sultan/to stay there until the arrival of the army. The Sultan then asked how many troops had kept pace with him? He was told 500 sawàrs/and/he said: “The fortune of Islam is in the ascendant! So this number is enough.”28
As the raiders neared their target, another spy, at a distance of about 12 kilometres away, reported that JWKA had not yet got news of their approach; but when they were only 4 kilometres away news had reached JWKA and he fled in haste leaving his clothes in disorder in his tent. At this point Mushtaqi fails to describe any other aspects of the campaign to retake Jawnpur and re-establish Barbak Shah there. Nizam al-Din Ahmad makes clear that a signal victory was achieved and the rebel zamìndàrs dispersed: The zamìndàrs assembled in large numbers, and offered opposition, but in the end were defeated and many became food for the sword, and much booty fell into the hands of the Sultan’s troops. The Sultan then went to Jawnpur.29
28 29
Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, p. 26. Nizam al-Din Ahmad, trans., I, p. 360.
170 According to Mushtaqi:
From that place [close to the Gomati]/Sultan Sikandar/pursued/JWKA/ to the fort of Chaund where Sultan Husain Sharqi was staying . . . Sultan Sikandar encamped in the vicinity of Chaund.30
This is indeed an abrupt change of scene. In place of Chaund Roy suggested Chanda, a village on the route between Sultanpur and Jawnpur, which has the attraction that the dominant caste is described by Abul Fazl and modern writers as Bachgoti; but it has no identifiable traces of a fort.31 By contrast the fort of Chaund remained a place of some prominence in the early sixteenth century, when it was in the possession of Muhammad Khan Sur, an independent collateral of Sher Khan Sur.32 The tenor of all the references to the fort in Sikandar Lodi’s reign also goes against Roy’s ingenious suggestion. Not only Mushtaqi and Abd al-Lah, but also Muhammad Kabir, associate both Sultan Husain and his general JWKA with the fort of Chaund; and the offer which Mushtaqi puts into Sikandar’s mouth telling the Sharqi that “this fort and the territory that you have gained today will remain with you” would make no sense if it was not a possible frontier on the main route to Bihar.33 In old age a veteran of the Lodi campaigns recalls the remote fastnesses to which their arms had penetrated: “It was due to our exertions that the fort of Chaund and the territories of Nagarkot (Kangra) were captured”.34 Such a retreat over the river would pose no great difficulty to JWKA if, as Amir of Chaund he possessed a fort. As the fort was strong, the Sultan did not besiege it, but marched towards Kantat, one of the dependencies of Bhatta. A campaign followed against the Baghela Raja of Bhatta, Bhaidachandra. Whereas Nizam al-Din Ahmad has no mention at all of JWKA or of a siege of Chaund, Mushtaqi adds the detail of the presence of Sultan Husain Shah himself:
30
Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, p. 27. Abul Fazl, À"ìn, II, p. 174; Chanda in Gazetteer of Oudh (Calcutta, 1877–8), p. 344. 32 Abbas Khan Sarwani, The Tàrì¶-i-Sher Shàhì, ed. S.M. Imam al-Din (Dhaka, 1964) II, trans., pp. 32–3,37,39,40. 33 Cf. the opening remarks of Muhammad Kabir, quoted above; Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, p. 27: “the fort and ground of which you have taken possession today are granted to you.” 34 Ahmad Yadgar, Ta"rì¶-i Shàhì, ed. M.H. Hosain (Calcutta, 1939), pp. 80–1. 31
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/Sikandar/pursued/JWKA/up to the fort of Chaund, where Sultan Husain Sharqi was./JWKA/took refuge with him in the fort.
Nizam al-Din Ahmad acknowledged the Wàqi"àt-i Mushtàqì as a source that he had consulted.35 Yet the omission by Nizam al-Din Ahmad at this point of the tale of the victory at Chaund may not reflect any lack of belief in its historicity or distaste for the tenor of Mushtaqi’s narrative. Among the compilers of panoramic Persian or Arabic histories it was common practice to copy one source, and then, when this source dried up, to copy another for the following section. Nizam al-Din Ahmad, working industriously in an imperial Mughal historiographical project, was the earliest surviving author of a general history of the Muslim presence in India—if one excepts the Shàhnàma-pattern epic account of Isami. Where the account provided by one regional Indo-Persian historiographical tradition differed from that of another regional tradition he would reproduce both without even alluding to their differences. For the Lodi dynasty—as I have argued elsewhere—Nizam al-Din Ahmad lacked any coherent narrative source, and he endeavoured to construct a chronological sequence from the memories of veteran campaigners.36 Towards the conclusion of his notice of Sikandar Lodi’s reign he may have turned to Mushtaqi for anecdotes in the “Mirror for Princes” tradition, but it is difficult to see any direct copying, although Nizam al-Din Ahmad’s summaries must have come from a text which has much of the same matter as Mushtaqi. Like Mushtaqi, Nizam alDin Ahmad includes a long story of the two brothers who were soldiers, the wife and the ruby. In this tale the divergences of Nizam al-Din Ahmad’s narrative from that of Mushtaqi may reflect the elegant variation that was considered permissible in this genre, or may reflect a common literary or oral model.37 Here once more Muhammad Kabir’s independence from the synoptic tradition of the Indo-Afghan histories gives value to his supporting evidence. His stories make only a vague attempt at a chronological sequence; but his background from a south Bihari Sufi family associated with the Indo-Afghans adds to the weight of his
35
Nizam al-Din Ahmad, trans., I, xiv. Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, pp. 37–41; Nizam al-Din Ahmad, trans., I, 389–91. 37 The variations are noted in a collection that I am publishing, entitled Tall Tales of the Afghans of India. 36
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testimony. Muhammad Kabir mentions a long stay of Sikandar Lodi in south Bihar, regarding which he tells a number of circumstantial anecdotes.38 This suggests that Nizam al-Din Ahmad did not manage to gather all the evidence of Sikandar Lodi’s movements. Muhammad Kabir’s testimony tends to confirm the historicity of Mushtaqi’s JWKA, of JWKA’s presence in the fortress of Chaund, and of his role as a great “Rajput Amir” of Husain Shah Sharqi. If the factuality of his information is accepted, there is less reason to reject the sequel related by Mushtaqi. If we accept that Mushtaqi’s anecdotes regarding JWKA are historical rather than fantastic, we can make the following deductions: 1. Although Abd al-Quddus characterised the administration of the rebels in the Cis-Gangetic territories of Jawnpur as kàfir, Sultan Husain Sharqi had advanced from south Bihar in anticipation of his own restoration by the rebels as ruler of Jawnpur. 2. JWKA had been appointed commander of the fortress of Chaund by Sultan Husain Sharqi. When JWKA advanced into the Jawnpur territories north of the Ganga, Husain Shah himself advanced from south Bihar to Chaund with other commanders of his military contingents. These Amirs who included his emissary, Saiyid Khan, were probably all Muslims. Otherwise Sikandar Lodi, given the stand that is attributed to him by Mushtaqi regarding JWKA, would not have provided handsome encampments for them when they were taken prisoner.39 3. JWKA, when he reached Chaund during his retreat, was taken into to the fortress by Sultan Husain, who later refused to surrender him to Sikandar Lodi, though offered a territorial concession in return. No reference to JWKA’s fate after Sultan Husain’s subsequent defeat is found. Mushtaqi’s account of the events that ensued at Chaund is one of the more formalized and—it must be said—more suspect narratives that are characteristic of the early portion of his history. In this it resembles the account, a few pages earlier, of the victory over Tatar Khan Lodi of Miyan Nizam (Sultan Sikandar before his succession to the throne) and his Sarvani allies.40 38 39 40
Muhammad Kabir, trans. Rizvi, pp. 374–6. Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, p. 29; trans. Rizvi, p. 109; Abd al-Lah, p. 48. Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, pp. 20–5.
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The narrative opens with an oratio recta exchange conveyed by an intermediary between the two rulers, which recalls the speeches put into the mouths of earlier Sultans of Delhi by Ziya al-Din Barani, an author with whose history Mushtaqi was probably familiar.41 Sikandar wrote that he regarded Husain as his uncle, and that in spite of what had passed between him and Sultan Buhlul: I have no hostility towards him and respect you. This fort and ground of which you have taken possession today may be granted to you. The purpose of my coming here is to chastise and correct the haràm¶wàr [eater of unlawful food] JWKA. It would be better if you punish him. Otherwise drive him out from you so that I may punish him as he deserves. For he is a kàfir and you should not take the side of kàfirs.42
Sultan Husain sent one of his great Amirs, Mir Saiyid Khan, with “an unsuitable answer” ( jawàb-i nàrawà), saying that JWKA was his servant (naukar-i man ast). He added that Sikandar’s father was a soldier and he had struck him with his sword. Sikandar was an ignorant boy, and he would strike him with a shoe! According to Mushtaqi, Sikandar’s reply to this was that he had not acted with folly: My intention is to punish a kàfir. If/Sultan Husain/wishes to support a kàfir, in that case/I/will be obliged/to act/. I have not acted gratuitously. This is a Muslim community ( jamà"at-i musalmànàn). You hear that from/Husain’s/mouth the word “shoe” has come out. If Allah wills, it will reach that mouth!
The remainder of Mushtaqi’s narrative has further moralizing of Sultan Sikandar, addressed to the envoy as a descendant of the Prophet. This is followed by a set-piece description of the battle, which lacks the realistic details of Muhammad Kabir’s account, of the earlier engagement at Chaund. Mushtaqi as a famous raconteur resembles a professional bard, recalling the place of each proud tribal contingent in the battle order. He concludes his notice with an account of Sikandar’s generosity in providing ample encampments (dà"ira, dera) for each of Sultan Husain’s Amirs who had been taken prisoner.
41 Abd al-Haqq Dihlavi notices Barani as a historian in his Ta£kira-i Musannifìni Dihlì; trans. Shams al-Lah Qadiri (Haydarabad, n.d.), p. 8. Abdal-Haqq was greatnephew of Mushtaqi. Among the Indo-Afghan historians Ahmad Yadgar mentions Barani as a model to imitate (Ta"rì¶-i Shàhì, p. 2). 42 Cf. Mushtaqi, trans Siddiqui, p. 27.
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The sentiments with which Mushtaqi credits Sultan Sikandar Lodi recall a medieval Indian Muslim debate, indeed a war of propaganda, of which we have both earlier and later traces. In this the Sultans of Jawnpur and their legatees were at an ideological disadvantage, because their principal resource of manpower was, as Dirk Kollf has surmised, from indigenous “Rajput” armed groups organized tribally, not even allegedly from Muslims of immigrant stock. The same accusations against a Jawnpur Sultan, of employing kàfir troops against Muslims had been made almost half a century earlier, when Sultan Ibrahim invaded Kalpi in 1444 AD. The unfortunate Nasir Khan of Kalpi wrote to the Sultan of Malwa: /Sultan Ibrahim/had made Musalmans captive and had looted and carried away their property as if it had been an infidel land [dàr al˙arb]. A group of Hindus were attached to him like the muqaddams [chieftains] of Gahora and Bakhesar. Out of necessity His Highness [hazrat-i sàmì, Nasir Khan of Kalpi] has left and taken up residence at Chanderi, which is under the control of Your Majesty [Sultan Mahmud of Malwa].43
Those familiar with the later history of sub-Gangetic India will have no difficulty in recognizing the muqaddams of Gahora and Bakhesar as the Baghela chieftain of Bhatta-Gahora and the Ujjainiya chieftain of Baksar. Like JWKA of the Bachgotis half a century later, by 1444 AD they were commanders in the army of Jawnpur, with strongholds south of the Ganga. The same hostile line of argument is later adopted against such “non-Muslim” warlords as Medini Rai, Silhadi and Puran Mall.
2. The Mahdi from Jawnpur and the warband According to the fairly extensive hagiographical tradition current among his followers. the life of Saiyid Muhammad Mahdi Jawnpuri (1443–1505 AD) followed a pattern possibly unique among members of the Indo-Muslim religious elite of the pre-Mughal period. The only account of this to which I have access is a late Urdu compilation which cites sixteenth-century Mahdavi sources. In 1482 AD Saiyid Muhammad Mahdi left Jawnpur forever and
43
Kirmànì, Ma"àºir-i Mahmùdshàhì, ed. Nur al-Din Ansári (Delhi, 1968), p. 59.
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set out on his hijrat (“flight”—following the example of the Prophet when he left Mecca), a course of travels which lasted 23 years until his death near Farah, between Qandahar and Herat in the southwest of modern Afghanistan.44 Though he did not proclaim his mahdaviyyat till at the age of 46 in 901 AH/1495–6 AD he reached the Ka"ba in pilgrimage,45 his life in these wandering years was never that of a sedentary Sufi Shaikh who reached a measure of accommodation with the government of an Indian sultanate. 1482 was the year when Sultan Buhlul Lodi displaced Sultan Husain Sharqi from his capital of Jawnpur and enthroned his own son Barbak Shah.46 Though it is not mentioned in the hagiography, it is difficult to believe that Saiyid Muhammad’s hijrat was unconnected with this event. After leaving Jawnpur in 1482, “with the intention of performing the Hajj”, Saiyid Muhammad next stopped in Danapur (Dinapore), which lies a few miles west of the city of Patna. He was accompanied by a disciple called Shah Dilawur, who he was instructing, and by seventeen members of his own family. After some days, we are told, he received from Allah the order to proceed onward on his hijrat. He left behind at Danapur Shah Dilawur, whose religious frenzy he could not control, and he set out for Kalpi.47 Danapur is in the wrong direction for an intended journey from Jawnpur to Kalpi, and onward to western India. These details also suggest a precipitate flight at the time of the sacking of Jawnpur and a decision taken after a period of rest and regrouping. Like leaders of armed bands, Saiyid Muhammad went south beyond the Ganges to seek what destiny had in store for him. A timely display of healing powers to a local Raja next increased the number of his followers. Though Saiyid Muhammad had the education of a sharìf Muslim brought up in a city of Islamic learning, to which was added the 44 Saiyid Wali Sikandarabadi, Sawàni˙-i Mahdì-i Maw'ùd [Events of the Promised Mahdi] (Agra, 1301/1903), pp. 21–2. 45 Sawàni˙, p. 34. 46 For the date, see M.M. Saeed, The Sharqi Sultanate of Jawnpur (University of Karachi, 1972), p. 97; 1482 is the date which Buhlul commemorated by minting coins at Jawnpur. It is several years later than the date found in the manuals of Lane-Poole, Zambaur and Bosworth. The evidence of Sultan Husain’s fairly plentiful billon coinage suggests that this Sultan retained control of an eastern portion of the Sharqi territories until his death at Kohlgaon (Colgong) in 911/1505 ( Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Numismatic Supplement, XXXVI, Pl. 17). 47 Sawàni˙, p. 20.
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charisma of a holy man, his own subsequent career also shows some of the characteristics of a leader of a warband.48 As he moved through Kalpi and Chanderi and Mandu he soon had followers who were able to resist forcibly the coercion of local powerholders. Yet after an interval the group were always impelled by the threat of conflict with superior numbers to move onwards after they had outstayed their welcome. Their form of social organization was the da"ira, the “circle”, which in the Indo-Persian records of warfare of the early sixteenth century is used for the nightly stockaded encampment of a warband on the march, commanded by its amir or captain in the central tent (dera, now meaning “a tent” is corrupted from da"ira and both forms are used interchangeably in manuscripts of the IndoAfghan histories and other narratives of campaigns of the period, e.g. Bayazid Biyat).49 In the central and west Indian lands through which Saiyid Muhammad and his followers marched, their presence served as a magnet for discontented and dissident members of courtly groups, and some of these joined the faithful. The rulers and those in power, unless they thought they could derive some advantage from the presence of the Saiyid and his followers or the adoption of his ideology, were anxious to move the party onwards. In Gujarat, when, Saiyid Muhammad proclaimed himself the Mahdi after his pilgrimage to Mecca, tensions exacerbated. The next rest was in Sind, where the ruler had to provide boats to take the band across the Indus. After Balochistan, the end of the trail was in the marginal area of Farah, where for several years no other contenders rivalled his charisma or were powerful enough to dislodge Saiyid Muhammad. When the Mahdi died at the age of 63, he bequeathed what he stated were 48 A non-Mahdavi source sheds incidental light on Saiyid Muhammad’s links with the Muslim traditions of the Awadh countryside. One Shaikh Khizr, known as Shaikh Khan, described as a maternal first cousin (biràdar-i ¶àlàte) of Saiyid Muhammad, was a senior ¶alìfa of Shaikh Abd al-Quddus, whom he joined at Shahabad (this suggests that he had previously been with Abd al-Quddus in Rudawli, before the Bachgoti revolt of 1491). Later a longing for travel seized him. He left Shahabad and later went on pilgrimage. After his return from Mecca, in Gujarat he met Saiyid Muhammad who instructed him in pàs-i anfàs (Yogic control of breath) before he returned to Rudawli (Latà"if-i Quddùsì, pp. 36, 38–9). For this regional Sufi environment and Yogic influences upon it, see also Digby, “'Abd alQuddùs Gangohì”, pp. 1–66. 49 Cf. the account in Mushtaqi repeated by Abd al-Lah of the deras that Sikandar Lodi provided for the captured Amirs of Husain Shah (Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui, p. 29; Abd al-Lah, Ta"rì¶, p. 4a).
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his only possessions to the muhàjirs (participants in the “flight”) who accompanied him. His property consisted of sixty swords. Whoever had one in his possession was to keep it.50 After he set out on his hijrat, Saiyid Muhammad’s movements were recorded, generally with mention of dates or length of stay. For the first 40 (Muslim) years of his life in the vicinity of Jawnpur we have a single date of 875 AH /1470–1 AD, when he appears in the role of a commander of a band of 313 men in the service of Husain Shah Sharqi. The occasion was a conflict, of which the outcome appeared doubtful, with a Hindu ruler called Raja Dalpat Singh.51 Sultan Husain Sharqi is alleged to have been a devotee of Saiyid Muhammad. In this campaign Saiyid Muhammad is said to have slain the infidel Dalpat Singh, cleaving him with his sword. Saiyid Muhammad would have still possessed the vigour of youth, being then a man of 27 years. The date given for this feat is therefore plausible. The Sultan’s army is said to have consisted of brave (bahàdur) Bairagis (biràgìs), a detail that may be authentic in view of what is known of the dependence of the Jawnpur Sultans on North Indian footsoldiers (pàiks) under Hindu chieftains and recruiters.52 This anecdote is however the earliest reference, of which I am aware, to the rise of the military and mercenary Hindu ascetics who became so prominent in the struggles of the eighteenth century. Here the biràgìs are shown (with no hagiographical intent) fighting for a Muslim Sultan against a Hindu chief. Dalpat Singh is said in the hagiography to have been ruler of Gaur (Lakhnavati, West Bengal). The date given precludes this, for in the person of Barbak Shah the Ilyas Shah dynasty was still ruling in Bengal at this time. The Hindu Raja Ganesh or Raja Kans only rose to power in Bengal a decade later. The name Dalpat (Dalapati, “Lord of an Army”) was borne by the Raj-Gond ruler of Garha-Katanga, Dalpat Sah, husband of the celebrated Durgavati, but he flourished more than half a century later than the date at which this anecdote is set.53
50
Sawàni˙, pp. 56, 59. Sawàni˙, pp. 12–5. 52 Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, pp. 160–3. 53 Abul Fazl, Akbar Nàma, (Calcutta, 1875–1886), text, II, p. 209; trans. H. Beveridge (Calcutta, 1902–39), II, p. 304. 51
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However there is a more intriguing possibility. In the legendary story of the settlement of the Bachgotis at Sultanpur there is a Dalpat Sah, the slain brother-in-law of the Bachgoti chieftain.54 Could this tale of Saiyid Muhammad’s valour reflect an incident that occurred a dozen years before Buhlul Lodi dispossessed Husain Shah of Jawnpur, when the Bachgotis were less loyal to the Sharqi Sultan?
54
Crooke, The Tribes and Castes, I, p. 95.
SLAVERY AND NAUKARÌ AMONG THE BANGASH NAWABS OF FARRUKHABAD1 Jos Gommans The first Bangash Nawab of Farrukhabad, Muhammad Khan, was a son of Malik Ain Khan, descendant of an Afghan farmer in the Kabuli district of Bangash. Early during the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707) he had quitted his native country and settled in MauRashidabad, 34 km west of present-day Farrukhabad. Here he enrolled as an officer (sarkàr-i anfàr) in the cavalry of a fellow Afghan named Ain Khan Sarvani.2 Both were in the service of the local jàgìrdàr, Nawab Mirza Khan, who was a grandson of Khwaja Bayazid Ansari, famous founder of the Roshaniyya sect.3 Although in the beginning this heterodox movement had been thoroughly anti-Mughal, Bayazid Ansari’s descendants had, on the contrary, risen to prominence thanks to their military services to the Mughals. As a reward for their help during the Mughal campaigns in the Deccan, Mirza Khan and his brethren had received some jàgìrs in the area of Mau and Shamshabad. Still on the basis of their charismatic leadership and spiritual guidance, they had drawn many recruits from their tribal Roshaniyya following in Roh. Malik Ain Khan married in Mau and when he died left two sons. The oldest, Himmat Khan died while on a military expedition in the Deccan. His second son was Muhammad Khan who at the age
1 This essay was originally written 10 years ago and was intended to be a chapter in my PhD thesis on the Rohillas. For the present purpose I have considerably revised it, skipping the parts that were published in the thesis, with the exception of the description of the Bangash nasab (see J.J.L. Gommans, The Rise of the IndoAfghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 (Leiden, 1995), pp. 171–5). The revision was facilitated by the comments of Dirk Kolff who, some years ago, had a look at this droppedout chapter and advised me to rework and publish it. 2 Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tàrì¶-i Farru¶àbàd, British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), Or. 1718, f. 10b; M. Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1972), p. 51. 3 For details, see: W. Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad”, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Part 1, 47, 1 (1878), pp. 357–64.
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of twenty took service with Yasin Khan Ustarzai Bangash, one of the leading Afghans of Mau. As a small mercenary jobber ( jamà'adàr) he and his gang were primarily engaged in local conflicts in the Deccan and Bundelkhand. After Yasin Khan was killed at a siege, Muhammad Khan started a jamà'adàrì business of his own. He started with seventeen followers but soon after his first successes, more and more Afghans were willing to join his standard. Although in numerous small campaigns Muhammad Khan was able to increase his wealth and power considerably, his status among his fellow Afghans of Mau remained highly controversial. For them, he was just one among equals and every sign of elitist pretensions, like riding an elephant or sitting on an elevated cushion amongst his brother Afghans, could only be met with their ridicule or open opposition. This strongly egalitarian atmosphere, reminiscent of similar conditions among his Afghan brethren in Rohilkhand, made claims to legitimate leadership always extremely complicated. In the case of the Bangash chiefs this problem was further aggravated by their small numbers in and around Mau. In this essay I will discuss two aspects that played a crucial role in determining the power and authority of the Bangash Nawabs among the political elite in and beyond Farrukhabad, be it fellow Afghans or other co-sharers of the declining Mughal realm. The first aspect relates to their use of so-called chelas, elite slaves, mainly serving the Bangash military and the administration. These chelas were incorporated into the Nawab’s household to prop up their masters’ position among the other, mostly Afghan, chiefs of the little kingdom in and around Farrukhabad. In order to understand the internal context in which the chelas operated, I will start by describing the Nawab’s Bangash descent (nasab) and their Farrukhabad household. The second aspect relates to the turbulent vicissitudes of the Farrukhabad state as engendered by the Bangash Nawabs’ ongoing involvement in India’s bustling mercenary trade. In the end, it was neither their nasab nor their chelas but their extensive military services (naukarì ) which brought them all-India fame and fortune. Although Farrukhabad slavery continued to serve its limited purpose in Farrukabad itself, it was soon drowned, so to speak, in the turbulence and fluidity of the huge military labour market that was India. At the end of the century, with the Nawab’s naukarì business on the decline, we once again find chelas active, this time not obeying but manipulating an increasingly isolated and “decadent” Farrukhabad court.
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1. Slavery Bangash Nasab The Bangash tribe derived its name from the hilly area, north of the Sulaiman mountains, from Bannu to the Safed Koh, in between the Indus and the Kurram river. Its main centre, situated along the lower river valleys was the town of Kohat, also synonymous with the area called Lower Bangash or Pa’in Bangash. Under Mughal rule this area had been a nominal district (tùmàn) of the Kabul province.4 The area was of some importance as it provided an alternative northern route to the Khyber pass from Kabul to Peshawar and India. The Mughal emperor Babur, however, describes it as rather peripheral and being infested with nothing but Afghan highwaymen and thiefs, such as Khugianis, Khirilchis, Turis and Landars; all of whom, obviously, declined to pay taxes. Nevertheless, in 1505 Babur decided to raid and plunder the district following some intelligence about its great riches.5 Indeed, in Kohat the Mughals found cattle and corn in great abundance but they were not able to settle the area on a permanent basis since most of the tribes could temporarily retreat into the more impregnable upper hills called Bala Bangash or Kurram. For any central government, either from Delhi, Qandahar or Kabul, these hilly tracts of the Bangash tùmàn always remained an obstreperous area. As a result, Shiite Islam and heterodox movements, such as that of the Roshaniyya, mostly combined with and fuelled by anti-Mughal resentment, remained very strong indeed in this area.6 Before the sixteenth century, there did not exist a separate tribe or sub-tribe which was actually called Bangash. The seventeenthcentury Ma¶zan-i Af∞ànì does not mention them at all. Most of the inhabitants of Bangash envisaged themselves to be the descendents of one Karlani, and were known under various sub-headings such as Orakzais, Turis, Malik-Miris, Baizis and Kaghzais. The latter
4
I. Habib, An Atlas of Mughal India (Delhi, 1982), p. 3. Babur-Nama, trans. A.S. Beveridge (New Delhi, 1970), pp. 230–3. 6 O. Caroe, The Pathans, 500 B.C.–A.D. 1957 (Karachi, 1975), pp. 202–3; J. Arlinghaus, “The Transformation of Afghan Tribal Society: Tribal Expansion, Mughal Imperialism and the Roshaniyya Insurrection, 1450–1600” (Unpublished PhD thesis, Durham, N.C., Duke University). 5
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three had entered the lower valleys of Kohat somewhere between the late-fifteenth and early-seventeenth century from the surrounding hills of Upper Bangash and, probably, were subsequently called Bangash to distinguish them from the other Karlanis residing in the Kohat area, mainly Orakzais and Khataks.7 According to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indo-Afghan sources, all the tribal groups in Bangash could be commonly referred to as Bangash (qaumi Bangash) in accordance with their place of origin or residence.8 This was not unlike the development of the Indian eponym Rohilla, i.e. the people from Roh, although the name Bangash referred to a more restricted territory and as such applied to a smaller audience of potential immigrants.9 Although the category Bangash was more restrictively used in the Afghan context of Bangash proper, in India it could include all sorts of Afghan tribes who one way or another claimed their origin from this homonymous area, and this in its most imprecise and wide-ranging dimensions. Thus, we may conclude that the tribal eponym of Bangash came only into existence in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Kohat and Bangash, but found its widest definition in eighteenth-century Hindustan. Unlike the Indo-Afghan label Rohilla, Bangash referred to an existing ethnic category in Afghanistan although its definition became wider and more diffused in India. Muhammad Khan Bangash himself belonged to the Kaghzai line of the Karlani tribe of Bangash. He could trace his descent for more than four generations to one Daulat Khan, alias Haji Bahadur, of the Shamilzai of the Harya Khail.10 Our most trustworthy source in this respect, the mid-nineteenth-century Tàrì¶-i Farru¶àbàd by Muhammad Wali al-Lah, presents us with a fairly careful description of the nasab of these Kaghzai Karlanis. According to most of the earlier Afghan traditions the Karlanis could not claim an Afghan descent since they
7 H.G. Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan and Part of Baluchistan (London, 1888), pp. 389–90. 8 Hafiz Rahmat Khan, Khulàßat al-Ansàb, OIOC, Egerton 1104, f. 84b; Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tàrì¶, ff. 6a–b. 9 For the Rohilla case, see Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, pp. 163–71. 10 Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tàrì¶, f. 10b; Hafiz stresses the requirements for a proper nasab to be at least four generations (Hafiz Rahmat Khan, Khulàßat, f. 15a).
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were regarded, and regarded themselves as direct descendents from the prophet Muhammad or his clan, as Saiyids or Quraishis, who only through adoption and gradual accommodation had turned into Afghans.11 Muhammad Wali al-Lah, however, mentioning the Saiyid claim of some Karlanis in passing, stresses their undisputed Afghan identity. He points out that although Karlani was originally a Saiyid, he had been adopted by one Amir al-Din, the youngest son of Sarban and eldest son of the well-known great Afghan ancestor Qais. Therefore, he claims, the Karlanis should be recognised as full Sarbani Afghans.12 Muhammad Wali al-Lah is equally keen on delineating the origin of the name Kaghzai. The name must have given cause for confusion because there were also other Kaghzais who had no relationship whatsoever to the Karlanis but claimed to be the descendants of Sarvani. It was made clear that both should not be mixed up because the Karlanis acquired the name only because they had settled near the Sarvani Kaghzai in Upper Bangash. So, in fact, there were two unrelated variants of Kaghzais: Karlani Kaghzais and Sarvani Kaghzais.13 Muhammad Wali al-Lah’s rationalizations may again underline the importance of open and achieved identities. The Nawabs were Afghans by adoption; they were Bangash because they had moved to India from the Bangash area; and they were Kaghzai because they had lived near the Sarvani Kaghzai. Only their Karlani identity was taken for granted and not explained properly. All of this made perfect sense to the contemporaries since it alluded to existing customs and traditions and to a recognizable frame of reference. Within the wider category of Bangash Pathans, the Nawabs could claim a clear and recognisable nasab for themselves. The Bangash label served as an external marking against other Hindustani or Afghan groups like Rajputs, Rohillas or Afridis, and, at the same time, could appeal to all sorts of ethnical sub-groups from within the Bangash area. Within this fairly open category, the Nawabs could lay claim to a more exclusive and distinguished Karlani Kaghzai descent that underpinned their authority and status amongst the other local groups of Bangash Pathans, such as the Sarvani and Ustarzai Bangash. 11 12 13
Raverty, Notes, pp. 380–8. Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tàrì¶, ff. 9a–b. Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tàrì¶, ff. 10a–b.
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The Nawab’s attitude towards the other Bangash was always somewhat ambivalent. In order to raise their solidarity and group feeling he had to associate them with his government and with the inner circle of his sons and slaves (¶ànazàdas). This, however, made them powerful and always potentially dangerous. Consequently, he also needed to dissociate himself from them and keep them on a safe distance. The ethnical nomenclature reflected this continuous need for association and dissociation: the Bangash label could serve the tendency of inclusion while, at the same time, the Kaghzai identity could stress the exclusiveness of the Nawab’s nasab. The Farrukhabad household The core of the Bangash powerbase in Farrukhabad was the domestic household: the Nawab’s wives, sons and ¶ànazàdas. This latter group consisted primarily of his sons and his personal slaves or chelas.14 Those Bangash who were not part of the core household were attached to it by being married to the Nawab’s daughters. In general we may say that the Nawab made his sons, slaves and sons-inlaw his most trustworthy instruments of power by bestowing land on them in jàgìr or in'àm and by entrusting them with the most crucial positions in the administration and the army. The marriage rules of the Bangash household were relatively strict in order to maintain their exclusive status. Hence, beyond the household, the Bangash sub-tribe delineated the more or less endogamous marriage group. The Bangash Pathans declined, for example, to intermarry with Rohillas and even marriages with the esteemed Awadhi ruling family were considered problematic.15 Although the Nawab’s daughters were exclusively married to his Bangash brethren, rules for the male members of the family were less rigid. They sometimes married women from another distinguished Pathan tribe or accepted women from all kinds of people but as ladies and concu-
14 Khànazàda literally means “son of the house” or “household born one” and indicates clearly the slave’s inclusion in the household. For ¶ànazàdagì ethos under Mughals, see J.F. Richards, “Norms of Comportment among Imperial Mughal Officers”, in B.D. Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority, The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 262–7; and D.E. Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Delhi, 1989), pp. 146–8. 15 OIOC, Orme Mss. o.v. 173, ff. 171–2; Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 350.
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bines of the harem these had to content themselves with inferior positions. For example, females could be presented as dolas, i.e. daughters given in marriage to a superior by way of a tribute.16 Gifts of daughters could also confirm important political relations of the Nawab. This was the case with Raja Jaswant Singh, zamìndàr at Bhadoi, who had presented one of his daughters to Muhammad Khan. This indicated the Nawabs direct interests as the Raja was appointed to the charge of the ràhdàrì from Benares to Allahabad and as such was responsible for keeping open this important supply line for Farrukhabad.17 In this respect, the, size of the Nawab’s harem was a direct reflection of the Nawab’s attempts to build up a reliable following and alliances of his own. Muhammad Khan had been married to a daughter of Kasim Khan, another Bangash sardàr, who became his only legal wife and became styled as Bibi Sahiba. Besides, it was said, he held some 2600 concubines in his private apartments, of which 900 lived in nine separate establishments according to their ethnic origin of 100 each.18 According to Irvine, his son Nawab Qaim Khan (1743–8) had four wives, of whom only the first was a Bangash.19 Also Nawab Ahmad Khan (1750–71) married four wives whose descent is not altogether clear. His fourth wife, however, was an adopted daughter of Yaqut Khan, one of his slaves. Some of the Nawab’s courtiers claimed that she was a natural daughter of the famous Khan Jahan Khan Lodi, the principal Afghan noble during the rule of Shah Jahan. As Irvine relates: “The Nawab hearing this story fell in love with her without seeing her”.20 Eventually, she became the mother of Ahmad Khan’s successor, Dilir Himmat Khan Muzaffar Jang (1771–96) but, as he was known as the son of a slave girl, the legitimacy of his succession was strongly contested. The female part of the Nawab’s household could become very influential in state affairs. The Nawab’s begams, his wives and daughters, were able to accumulate lots of treasure and land deposited
16
Shivdas Lakhnawi, Shàhnàma Munnawar Kalàm, trans. S.H. Askari (Patna, 1980),
p. 5. 17
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 19 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 20 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, Part 48, 1 (1879), pp. 123–4, 159. 18
330. 339. 373. 2, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
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with them as pensions by their male relatives. Besides, from the harem they could manipulate court politics by setting up for themselves a private network of chelas, some of whom could walk freely in and out of the zanàna. Especially, at critical moments such as the Nawabi succession the principal widow-begam’s influence could be decisive.21 This was certainly true in the case of the Bibi Sahiba. After her last son Qaim Khan was killed in battle, she acted as the main representative of Bangash nasab and Bangash legitimacy. She could not only support the preferred successor by presenting him with sufficient funds to build his own following; above all, her approval was absolutely needed to sanction the Nawabi succession. At the death of Qaim Khan in 1748, the Bibi Sahiba sent for all her husband’s sons and she directed the second eldest son, Ahmad Khan, to succeed his half-brother to the masnad. He refused the honour, however, because he knew that she actually favoured Imam Khan, and therefore would not support him in the longer term. Consequently, Imam Khan became the new Nawab but it was actually the Bibi Sahiba herself, with the help of her late husband’s chelas, who ruled in his place. Two years later she was, however, confronted with grave difficulties because of her continuing conflicts with the Awadh court and, as a consequence, her general lack of funds. In these circumstances Ahmad Khan had been able to bring the Mau Afghans on his side. With their moral and material support he could now claim the Nawabship for himself. Still, he could not dispense with the approval of his stepmother. With Imam Khan imprisoned in Allahabad, the Bibi Sahiba decided to ask Ahmad Khan to come to Mau. After he showed his obeisance by presenting her with a tribute (na£r), she, in her turn, invested him as reigning Nawab with a robe of honour (¶il 'at), after which all the other Afghans could present their offerings, again by way of na£r. Only now, Ahmad Khan seemed to be fully installed as the legitimate Nawab.22 However, it should be kept in mind that de jure and de facto Nawabi rule not only hinged on the internal back-
21 Cf. Begams at Awadh court: R. Barnett, North India Between Empires. Awadh, the Mughals and the British 1720–1801 (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 100–2. For a similar case at Bhopal: S.N. Gordon, “Legitimacy and Loyalty in some Successor States of the Eighteenth Century”, in J.F. Richards, Kingship and Authority in South Asia (Madison, 1978), pp. 287–300. 22 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, pp. 59–60.
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ing of the begams, the Bangash and other Pathan sardàrs or the chelas, but also, on the external mechanism of imperial power and authority. Chelas The Bangash Nawabs systematically recruited personal slaves who were entrusted with the most vital posts in the administration, the revenue collection and the army. These slaves played a significant role as a kind of artificial family in-group which was entirely attached to the person of their patron. The Farrukhabad slaves were basically identical to the elite military slaves of the Turko-Persian world, called mamlùk in Arabic, ∞ulàm in Persian and kul in Turkish. Though technically meaning “slave”, these words carried a connotation not of enslavement or the servility of the Uncle Tom’s kind, but, on the contrary, of power and dominance. The model for this kind of elite slavery was highly developed in the Middle East and Iran ever since the decline of the caliphate. Until the nineteenth century the mamlùk system worked exceedingly well and succeeded in perpetuating and stabilizing the existing structures of the Islamic state. In the Indian setting, the elite slaves of the Bangash Pathans and other Afghans were commonly referred to as chelas, i.e. disciples. This was consistent with the existing Indo-Mughal paradigm. Nonetheless, Muhammad Khan Bangash, who introduced the chela system from the start of his rule in Farrukhabad, preferred to call his chelas: atfàli sarkàr or children of the state. Other appellations include ∞alib bacha or ∞aΩanfar bacha which both refer to Muhammad Khan’s personal progeny.23 These names seem to indicate an Afghan approach to the slave as being regarded as the (adopted) son (walad ) of his master-patriarch (wàlid ). As such the master and his slave developed relations very similar to those of a family. Hence, the natural sons of the Nawab, were to be regarded as the brothers of the chela, like the chelas felt brothers of each other and the death of a chela had also to be revenged by his Bangash brothers. Chelas were as close to the person and body of the Nawab as were his sons. Like his own children, at a young age chelas were displayed in public on the lap of the Nawab. Similarly, the Nawab’s principal wife, the Bibi Sahiba,
23
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, pp. 340–1.
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observed no purda to the closest chelas of the Nawab. The chelas were also allowed to sit in darbàr immediately next to the Nawab and his sons. Riding on his elephant, two chelas were always closely seated behind him. Not surprisingly, their preferential treatment could give rise to feelings of envy and annoyance among the Nawab’s sons as the following story given by Irvine shows: One day Bhure Khan [chela and nà"ib of Allahabad] coming into darbar late, could find no place to sit; kicking away the pillow separating Muhammad Khan and Qaim Khan, he sat down between the Nawab and his son. Qaim Khan turned angrily to his father and said: “You never respect me.” Muhammad Khan replied that he loved them as he did his sons. Qaim Khan got up in rage, and went off to his home in Amethi. Muhammad Khan then scolded Bhure Khan saying that he had lost confidence in him, for if while he was alive they did not respect his sons, who knew what they would do when he was dead. Bhure Khan putting up his hands, said: “May God Almighty grant that I never see the day when you no longer live”.24
Although chelas could never lay claim to the leadership of the Bangash clan, in the wake of their master, some of them were able to acquire great wealth and two of them were allowed to bear the title of Nawab themselves. Nawab Ahmad Khan Bangash himself was styled Barà (senior) Nawab, his chela Zulfiqar Khan, nàΩim of Shamshabad, was called Majhlà (middle) Nawab and his chela Daim Khan, in charge of Shahpur-Akbarpur, was called Chhotà ( junior) Nawab.25 Besides, like the Nawab’s sons, many of the chelas were allowed to ride in pàlkìs or on elephants.26 All this may illustrate how the chelas were incorporated into the household of the Bangash Afghans. As adopted sons they became part of the patrimonial family of the Bangash ruler and as such were co-sharers of his realm. This was, however, only one side of the coin. What about the indigenous feedback to this Afghan model? In a way, the life of a military chela fitted in well with the martial outlook of the Hindustani peasantry. Dirk Kolff has already stressed the importance and extensiveness of the armed peasantry in Hindustan, where, as late as the nineteenth century, military sports
24 25 26
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 345. Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, pp. 160–1. Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, p. 69.
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were very much a part of the daily life of the village.27 Moreover, Rajput values stimulated the complete devotion in service to a rightful patron. As analysed by Norman Ziegler, the Rajput chàkarì bond to their Mughal patrons was a “product of identification and obligation generated through the establishment of personal bonds and affiliations sanctioned by local custom, and the fulfilment of cultural aspirations and ideals, defined in local myth and symbol”. In this symbolism the kingdom or thàkurat was a marriage between the ruler or thàkur and the conquered land, which came to his care and protection. All his subjects were regarded as his children and in particular his servants and clients were his sons. In this sense, the Rajput ideal is the complete devotion to the thàkur.28 As this Rajput outlook underscored the bond between Mughal patron and his Rajput client, it applied no less to the even more intimate relationship between the Afghan master and his Rajput chela. Of course, unlike the chela, the chàkar could preserve his freedom, caste and religion. Nevertheless, the chela, as the adopted son of his master, came even closer to the ideal of utter and exclusive devotion. Indeed, chelas could turn into venerated personalities, local heroes, or otherwise become the centre of Rajput ritual. This was the case with one of Muhammad Khan’s principal chelas, Dilir Khan. He was originally a Bundela Rajput but as 'àmil in Bundelkhand he became an important chela of Muhammad Khan. After his death in a battle against his own kinsmen the following local custom grew up in Bundelkhand: every son of a Bundela, on reaching the age of twelve years, is taken by his father and mother to Maudan, where they place his sword and shield on Daler Khan’s tomb. They make an offering, and the boy then girds on the sword and takes up the shield, while the parents pray that he may be brave as Daler Khan.29
In general, we may say that, on the one hand, the chela institution of Farrukhabad was originally a predominantly Turko-Persian phenomenon which, through Turkish and Afghan channels, was imported
27
D.H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 17–31. 28 N.P. Ziegler, “Some Notes on Rajput Loyalties during the Mughal Period”, in J.F. Richards (ed.), Kingship and Authority in South Asia (Madison, 1978), pp. 215–51. 29 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 286.
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into Hindustan. On the other hand, its kinship idiom positively appealed to indigenous Rajput values which stressed their manliness and their utter devotion to a father-thàkur. Let us now take a closer look at the main functions and characteristics of this particular IndoAfghan variant of the mamlùk system. From the very beginning of their first settlement in Mau, the Bangash Afghans felt themselves in a very precarious position vis-à-vis other groups in the area, not the least with regard to their fellow Afghans. As mentioned already, in Mau the Bangash Pathans were in a distinct minority of only 100 to 600 men.30 Muhammad Khan Bangash was only one among equals, and because other sub-tribes were far more numerous than his, he was even less equal than most of the other tribal leaders. After his foundation of Farrukhabad, Muhammad Khan was able to relieve the situation somewhat but it was very clear that without sufficient support in numbers there was no room for ambitious chiefs like him. In order to create a reliable and large following which shared his nasab, he could try to invite other Bangash Pathans from Afghanistan to come and join him in Hindustan. This could, however, not solve the problem entirely. First of all, the sources for recruitment were limited since even in Afghanistan proper, Bangash Afghans were not very numerous. Besides, these Bangash allies and sons-in-law were not always as reliable as one might hope for. They frequently became unruly elements or even, since they shared his nasab and his power, they could become rivals to the ruling Nawab himself. Thus like their western neighbours, the Afghan chiefs of Rohilkhand, the Bangash Nawabs tended to stress the importance of nasab, but unlike them, this was not sufficient to incorporate a large and reliable Afghan following. In these circumstances, the systematic and large-scale recruitment of personal slaves could offer a viable alternative for which they could have recourse to that old-established Turko-Persian formula of the mamlùk. Under Muhammad Khan Bangash the recruitment of personal chelas was dramatically intensified. During his rule some 4000 of them were raised. The chelas were recruited at a very young age, of about 7 to 13 years old, from primarily Rajputs and also sometimes
30
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1 p. 363; Nur al-Din Husain Khan Fakhri, [Tawàrìkh-i Najìb al-Daula], trans. J. Sarkar, Islamic Culture, 7,4 (1933), p. 617.
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brahmans.31 Although according to their religious prescriptions, Muslims were not allowed to enslave fellow Muslims, this did not raise much problems in an overwhelmingly Hindu society. Hence, expensive and long-distance importation of slaves could be dispensed with and most of the chelas were locally taken in military campaigns against revenue defaulters or other enemies of the Nawab. Whenever one or another of his 'àmils had a fight with a troublesome village, he was instructed to seize all the Hindu boys he could get and to forward them to the Nawab. People were sometimes quite willing to let their children be adopted by a person in higher places. As a consequence of famine or other distress they could also be forced to do so because they lost all means to subsist their children any longer.32 Hence, natural disasters and failing crops could strongly stimulate the slave trade as a result of a dramatic increase of the supply of slaves at public markets.33 During the eighteenth century, especially the slave markets along the fringes of the Himalayas were famous for their large supply of slaves which were carried in large numbers down the hills for sale. Although the chelas were recruited from local sources, there were no serious problems of slaves remaining loyal to their own original family or kin. Once a chela always a chela: it was probably neither possible, nor attractive, to return to one’s former home. Under Muhammad Khan the chelas preserved their caste-identity, and were married to slave girls from the same caste. Later, however, in Ahmad Khan’s time, there was left just one corporate chela category. Chelas were never reported to have deserted the Nawab’s ranks in order to join their former kinsmen. They were too much involved in their own careers which were entirely linked to the fate of their patron. After the chelas were adopted, they converted to Islam, received a new name and were submitted to a regime of religious, literary and military training which was focused on the transformation of the recruit’s identity, the development of his military and administrative 31
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 340. In 1770 Shuja al-Daula send one of his eunuchs to Patna in order to “purchase a number of those boys and girls who are starving at Patna and who he intends to bring up for the service of his household” (National Archives of India New Delhi (NAI), Foreign and Political Dept., SC70, No. 17, “Harper to Alexander, 15 April 1770”. 33 I. Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (Bombay, 1963), pp. 102, 110, 322–24. 32
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skills and also on the drumming of his loyalty to the Nawab. When a boy could read and write he was taken before the Nawab who bestowed upon him, by way of ¶il'at, one hundred rupees, a shield and a sword. From among the chelas of 18 to 20 years of age the Nawab selected 500 for his private bodyguard and trained them as a picked regiment.34 Most of the others were entrusted with leading positions in the army such as recruitment officers (ba¶shì), cavalry officers (sawàr-wàlà), heads (dàro∞a) of the stables and the elephant establishment or commanders of forts (qila'dàr). Some of them were in the possession of large jàgìrs. They played a crucial role in the revenue collection as ministers (diwàns), collectors ('àmils) and farmers (ijàradàrs), particularly at places where the collection was difficult as a result of widespread Afghan landholding interests in areas such as in Mau and Shamshabad. Some of them also figure as the Nawab’s deputy (nà"ib) in the provincial government of newly acquired territories. Others feature as architects of public buildings. Niknam Khan chela, for example, laid out the fort of Farrukhabad and built many of its edifices. Some 17 ganjs were founded by chelas. We also come across them as founders of bazaars, caravanserais, bridges, step-wells (bà"òlìs) and as planters of gardens. In all these capacities chelas played a pivotal role in stimulating cultivation and trade. Apart from these critical military and administrative posts a score of other chelas were employed in the household and the harem. These were functions that derived their importance from their closeness to the body-person of the Nawab. Some chelas were allowed to approach the Bibi Sahiba unveiled such as attendants of the bath-rooms, keepers of the rosaries, attendants to help in the ablutions for prayers, for driving away flies, and numerous other personal servants who encircled the Nawab.35 This chela encirclement of the Nawab’s person in his private departments was even literally reproduced in the design of Farrukhabad-city. Not only around the central fort the houses of his chelas were built, but also around the outer part of the city, residences were allotted to the Nawab’s sons and chelas. Despite of his intimate and close relations with his chelas, there was also a feeling of ambivalence and wariness towards them on the part of the Nawab. Being entrusted with the most crucial positions
34 35
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 341. Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, p. 165.
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of the state, the chelas were extremely liable to abuse their power against the Nawab. Although they were deracinated and freed from their former ties to society, this did not deprive them from looking at their own personal interests or from being seduced to courtly intrigue; even when this was against the interests of the Nawab himself. With this in mind, the first Nawab frequently reallocated his chelas from one province to another as every chela 'àmil was not allowed to stay more than two or three months in one province.36 In this way the Nawab hoped to screen his chelas from new vested and local interests. Nevertheless, things could easily run out of control whenever a chela became too successful in collecting the revenue. One example of this is the case of Islam Khan, chela of Ahmad Khan, who was appointed faujdàr of Kasganj. At his arrival there, he started to procure money from the local bankers and landholders in return for a bond on the incoming revenue. Then he suddenly collected a following of some 5000 men and started to plunder some of the neighbouring villages. On hearing of this threatening development, the Nawab ordered Islam Khan to stop these dreadful activities immediately. Meanwhile the chela’s troops had risen to 10,000. Amongst them were even numerous Pathans from Mau, Qaimganj and Shamshabad. No wonder, Islam Khan declined the order by answering that he only wanted to seat his patron on the throne of Delhi. The Nawab, however, concluded that the chela had rebelled and he asked the rajas of Hathras and Bharatpur to crush the rebellion. After they had defeated Islam Khan’s army, the chela returned to Farrukhabad and presented himself submissively to his master. He was not punished heavily and after some time he was even restored to his former post of ba¶shì.37 Similar apprehensions made the Nawab forbid chelas to construct masonry structures. Nothing was to be built but with sun-dried bricks and mud-mortar. Each chela was only allowed to build one single brick room as a reception hall. In general, the Nawab appears to have had a monopoly on building imposing brick buildings. 38
36
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 346. Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, pp. 162–3. 38 Perhaps, this explains why European travelers were not impressed at all with the outward appearance of Farrukhabad, otherwise so famous for its riches. But as Tieffenthaler observed around 1750, this was only a façade because from the inside the houses were more luxurious and brick was used freely ( J. Tieffenthaler, “La 37
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Exceptionally trustworthy, however, were the eunuch chelas, many of whom were entrusted with various responsibilities in the zanàna. Since they had no issue of their own and had lost much of their manliness, they were more reliable than other chelas, as is indicated in the case of eunuch Yaqut Khan chela, who was allowed to found seven ganjs and to erect numerous brick buildings for himself.39 The controlling measures of the Nawab were not sufficient to keep all ambitions of his chelas at bay. Especially after Ahmad Khan’s government, they increasingly began to claim independent positions of their own. The most important example of this was Fakhr al-Daula. He started his career as a chela and ba¶shì of Muhammad Khan but rose to real prominence under Ahmad Khan. He played a decisive role in Muzaffar Jang’s successful succession in 1771 and was for three years the practical ruler of Farrukhabad. After Farrukhabad had become tributary to Awadh in 1775, the chelas remained active in court politics and in 1796 again played an important role in the Nawabi succession. Meanwhile they became more and more inclined to lead a luxurious and easy life. The British residents in Farrukhabad complained frequently about them as decadent and worthless people. With the decline of Nawabi power, some of them were able to keep land under their own control but others changed into nominal and absentee managers and left the real business to their local agents (kàrindas) who frequently embezzled the proceeds.40 What might in retrospect be said about the efficiency and success of the chela system? During the rule of the first three Nawabs it worked extremely well as a foundation of Nawabi power and even as an instrument of economic growth. The army and administration were successfully professionalised as they were staffed, so to speak, by enslaved “young urban professionals” who were entirely dedicated to their careers in the service of the Nawab. Without a powerbase of their own they were less inclined to get themselves enmeshed in
géographie de l’Hindoustan”, in J. Bernouilli, Description historique en géographique de lÍnde, Vol. 1 (Berlin, 1786–1791), p. 196. 39 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 342. For eunuchs in India, see G. Hambly, “A Note on the Trade in Eunuchs in Mughal Bengal”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 94 (1974), pp. 125–30. In 1764 Ahmad Khan adviced Shuja al-Daula to put more trust on his eunuchs (¶wàja-saràs). During the eighteenth century they remained extremely popular at the Awadh court (A.H. Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture (Delhi, 1989), pp. 30–2). 40 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 161.
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the usual Indian procedures of constantly shifting loyalties and alliances. In the long run, however, as their power and wealth increased, chelas also proved human after all. Under Ahmad Khan already the chelas had started to carve out positions of their own and some of them began to assume aristocratic lifestyles in which they indulged in singing and dancing performances and hunting. They had lands of their own, money of their own, houses and entire ganjs of their own, children and even chelas of their own. Most of them had been the personal slaves of Muhammad Khan. After his death they became automatically the slaves of his successor but felt naturally less allegiance to him. From the time of Muzaffar Jang, the Nawab had become entirely dependent on the chelas since they could secure his accession to the throne. Even during the successful years of Muhammad Khan and Ahmad Khan the chelas were only one instrument of power. At times, they had to be balanced by other groups, other chelas, other Bangash Pathans, Afridis or some other naukarì retainers and mercenaries for sale at the military labour market. Probably aware of the growing dangers of a system which was so closely attached to the Nawab’s person and hence could get easily out of hand, Ahmad Khan decided to reduce the chela establishment, recruiting only 400 new slaves during his entire rule (1750–71). As indicated by Seema Alavi, Ahmad Khan’s rising star in the mid-eighteenthcentury politics of the Mughal Empire, was accompanied by a considerable change in the ideology which had welded together the Farrukhabad state. Bestowed with high Mughal honours, Ahmad Khan started to emulate Mughal processions, celebrated his birthday with the pomp and circumstance of the Mughal emperor and used these political rituals and celebrations to construct a new form of kingship to replace the Afghan and mamlùk traditions of the earlier period.41 While Ahmad Khan’s naukarì businesses escalated, his Afghan brethren and chelas faded into the background. But let us have a closer, chronological look at the Bangash Nawabs’ rising fortunes at the military labour market and start again with Muhammad Khan.
41 S. Alavi, The Sepoy and the Company. Tradition and Transition in Northern India (Delhi, 1995), pp. 201–2.
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2. Naukarì
Rise As one of the principal personages among the Mau Afghans, Muhammad Khan had led many plundering and freebooting expeditions especially into the Deccan and Bundelkhand. Most of the time he put himself at the head of 500 to 1000 horsemen and became engaged by one or other local raja who had to deal with rebellious landlords or peasants in his territory. Frequently, a kind of contract was agreed to in which part, usually one fourth, of the plunder, was reserved for the chief, the jamà'adàr, and his troops, half of which was to be forwarded in advance.42 The usual routine of such an expedition was to realise the contract and to maximize its gains by discrete mutual arrangement with the so-called rebels.43 A show of force and, sometimes even actually fighting could be useful as this could raise the reputation of the gallant jamà'adàr and, so, could strengthen his bargaining position vis-à-vis potential employers or rivals. Whenever violence did occur it was to be presented, rather theatrically, as a demonstration of the jamà'adàr’s military ability to handle his horses, guns and swords. Usually, however, violence was as much as possible avoided since it could harm the major assets of the expedition itself: horses, men and, to a lesser extent, elephants. Hence, naukarì was a business of rational cost-benefit analysis in which violence contributed to the naukar’s warlike profile but in practice had to be as much as possible avoided. In 1712, Muhammad Khan could muster around 12,000 troops and had become a force to be reckoned with in Hindustan. During the struggle for the Mughal throne between Jahandar Shah and his nephew Farrukhsiyar, both claimants invited all major nobles and chiefs to join them. After he had sent one of his agents to find out which side was most likely to succeed, Muhammad Khan joined Saiyid Abd al-Lah Khan, main supporter of Farrukhsiyar. At the ensuing battle, the Bangash appears to have served bravely as a com-
42 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 270. Note the similarity with the Maratha “protection rent” of cauth (A. Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 44–7). 43 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 271.
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mander of the elephant corps ( jamà'adàr-i fil-sawàr).44 At the end of the day his political intuition had proven itself quite reliable. After Farrukhsiyar had gained the throne, Muhammad Khan was incorporated in the new Mughal body politic by being invested with a ¶il 'at and by being presented with an elephant, a horse, a sword, besides eight jàgìrs in Bundelkhand. At the same time he was raised to the rank of a manßabdàr of 4000 and from that time he became styled as nawàb.45 Suddenly, Muhammad Khan had changed from a petty jamà'adàr into an important manßabdàr and pillar of the imperial throne. Obviously, his expertise and contacts in Bundelkhand and Malwa were most welcome to the new emperor who did not have any effective control over this area because of increased Maratha incursions. In order to regain imperial rule in the area imperial policy tried to direct Muhammad Khan’s attention especially to these turbulent areas. For this reason, he was given the jàgìrs in Bundelkhand and similarly, in 1730, he was appointed ßùbadàr or governor of Malwa. These were not positions meant to be enjoyed without opposition but only paper appointments, intended and hoped to be realised in future. It was equally clear, however, that if he was to succeed in the Deccan, he needed a sure and more permanent base on which he could build his power on. For this reason, in 1714, Farrukhsiyar bestowed 52 Bamtela villages, not far from his home in Mau, in àltam∞à (on a permanent basis) on his wife, the Bibi Sahiba, as a kind of blood price for her father who had been killed by one of its Bamtela Thakurs. This was an excellent opportunity for Muhammad Khan to leave the parochial atmosphere of Mau once and for all. In order to underline his newly achieved imperial status he needed to emancipate himself from his fellow Afghans. In 1713 he had already founded Qaimganj and Muhamdabad, two new qaßbas in the direct vicinity of Mau. One year later, however, he commissioned one of his chelas to build an extensive new city called Farrukhabad, along the Ganges 34 km east of Mau, in the new Bamtela territories he had gained through his wife. From this new basis the Bangash Nawab started to carve out a territory of his own (wa†an), free from
44 45
Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tàrì¶, f. 19a. Ibid.; Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 274.
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either Afghan or Mughal interference. The adjacent territories were relatively easily annexed, mostly sanctioned by bribing the local qànùngo (local accountant of revenue records) or by new grants or revenuefarm (ijàra) leases from absentee jàgìrdàrs in Delhi to the Nawab or one of his chelas. This was done especially in those areas where revenue defaulters made the collection extremely difficult. After some time most of these lands fell completely under Nawabi control and were annexed to the Nawabi wa†an.46 From the start, the local power of the Bangash Nawab was traded off against the legitimacy of the imperial nobles in Delhi. During this process the Nawab’s position grew more and more powerful and, at the same time, more and more legitimate. At the end, he had come in a position to ward off any involvement of the old jàgìrdàrs from the imperial centre who could only acquiesce in this fate or invite other greedy outside powers to restore their lost incomes. Meanwhile, Farrukhabad had not only become the central repository of the Nawab’s wealth but soon developed as the regional hub of an extensive commercial network that linked the flourishing northwestern trading network to the south and east. For example, horses, coarse cotton cloths, grain and indigo from Rohilkhand found their way to Awadh and Benares via Farrukhabad, where they were exchanged for more luxurious textiles from the eastern provinces. Via its extensive credit network, and facilitated by its mint, Farrukhabad was also able to attract new emigrants from Afghanistan. The Nawab made over large sums of cash by bills of exchange (hu»∂ìs) via Lahore to Kabul in order to invite his countrymen to settle in Farrukhabad.47 Also many Sufis and other “intellectuals” were enticed to come and settle in Farrukhabad. Some of these men attracted a large following of both Muslims and Hindus who visited their hospices or became their disciples. Many ¶ànaqàs were built to accommodate them and lands and large sums of cash were distributed amongst them.48 According to Wendel, Farrukhabad had such a reputation as a home
46 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787”, ff. 148–92. 47 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, pp. 323–4. Cf. Farrukhabad coins found in Afghanistan ( J. Rodgers, “The Coins od Ahmad Shah Abdali”, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 54 (1885), p. 72. 48 For some examples, see S.A.A. Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and his Times (Canberra, 1980), pp. 182–83; and, Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, pp. 137, 157.
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for holy men that it became commonly known as Faquirabad.49 At that time, increased migration to Farrukhabad was part of the general drain of people and resources away from the old Mughal centres of Lahore, Delhi and Agra to the new capitals of the Mughal successor states. Obviously, all these new immigrants strengthened the local power base of their new patron as they gave him additional status or as they even fought actually with him in his numerous campaigns.50 Many of the conquered and newly acquired territories were given in jàgìr to the Afghan nobility and chelas. Some of them laid out large fruit and pleasure gardens but the overall revenue collection was mainly farmed out to those who had sufficient power and credit to ensure regular payment. As a result, most of the Afghans were absentee landlords who were not actively engaged in the land management themselves, as they were fully engaged as administrators and mercenaries.51 The existing local establishment of zamìndàrs and peasants could frequently be preserved although on top of it a new layer of landholders and their agents ('àmils) or farmers (ijàradàrs) was placed. This was possible since agriculture was sufficiently sure to sustain a new ruling elite without having to throw out the existing cultivators. In due course, the old zamìndàrs and chaudhurìs could even become great ijàradàrs as they took over responsibility and paid the arrears of unwilling neighbouring villages.52 Other zamìndàrs, however, had to renounce all rights to their estates and had to contend themselves with only a small part of the produce as an allowance for their assistance in the revenue collection (nànkàr). Sometimes, especially when resistance was strong or when room was needed for
49 F.X. Wendel, Les Mémoires de Wendel sur les Jats, les Pathan et les Sikhs, ed. J. Deloche (Paris, 1979), p. 140. 50 For the economic position of Farrukhabad, see Gommans, The Rise of the IndoAfghan Empire, pp. 42, 96, 128–33. 51 OIOC, V/23/136, Selections from the Revenue Records North Western Provinces, Vol. 3 (Allahabad, 1873), p. 311; E.T Atkinson (ed.), Statistical, Descriptive and Historical Account of the North Western Provinces of India, Vol. 7 (Allahabad, 1874–1884), pp. 75,105,349. 52 OIOC, V/23/136, Selections from the Revenue Records North Western Provinces, Vol. 3 (Allahabad, 1873), pp. 412–3; Cf. E. Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj, Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1980), p. 75; and I. Husain, “Agrarian Change in Farrukhabad District, Late eighteenth and First Half of nineteenth Century. A Study of Local Collection of Documents” (Mimeo. paper Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, 1979).
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large Afghan or chela colonies, such as in Kampil and Shamshabad, the existing landholders were completely ejected.53 This was the exception, however, and normally there was no actual displacement of the old, mostly Rajput, landholders. Usually, they were merely degraded to local agents and overseers (mìr-dah) in direct service of the new jàgìrdàr, in'àmdàr or ijàradàr and were paid a fixed allowance or a percentage of the realized revenue (˙àßil ) in cash or in land.54 In general we might conclude that, except from laying out watered fruit and pleasure gardens, the conquering elite of Afghans kept themselves aloof from direct engagements in the soil and from their subject peasant population. The actual management of their jàgìrs was left to wealthy and powerful 'àmils or ijàradàrs who were only willing to be involved because they felt it to be profitable. At the same time, however, the Afghans could concentrate their attention on the business of military naukarì. So let us return to Muhammad Khan’s military adventures. Apogee In 1720 the new emperor Muhammad Shah confirmed the Nawab in his control of the existing and acquired territories around Farrukhabad and increased his manßabdàrì rank to 7000. He was also appointed ßùbadàr of the extremely rich and relatively easily-held province of Allahabad.55 Both this province and his wa†an of Farrukhabad, as also Rohilkhand, were the main naukarì recruitment centres for the intensive Bangash Nawab’s campaigns in Bundelkhand and Malwa. Several times the Bangash Nawab collected a large following of freebooters in the north and tried to secure a firm footing in the area by everywhere establishing his military posts (thànas) under the command of his chelas. He also sought a Muslim alliance with Nizam al-Mulk who also tried to gain a hold on his provinces in the Deccan against continued “infidel” Maratha incursions.56 In
53 H.F. Evans, Final Report of the Settlement of the Farrukhabad District (Allahabad, 1875), pp. 14–5; Atkinson, Statistical, Descriptive and Historical Account, p. 282. 54 OIOC, Bengal Revenue Consultations Ceded and Conquered Provinces, P/90/39, 20–9–1803, “Agent Farrukhabad to Secret. Brd. of Revenue, 20 September 1803”; P/90/40, “Agent Farrukhabad to Secret. Brd. of Revenue, 30 December 1803”. 55 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 305. 56 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1 p. 309; Z. Malik, “Muhammad Khan
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1736, however, due to continued Maratha opposition, in league with local zamìndàrs and several imperial jàgìrdàrs who all had their own local interests, the Bangash involvement in Bundelkhand and Malwa came to a complete halt. As a consequence, the Allahabad province was never again entrusted to the Bangash Nawabs, who now began to redirect their interests more to the north-west. Muhammad Khan died in 1743 and was succeeded by his eldest son Qaim Khan without any opposition as he was the only living son of Muhammad Khan and the Bibi Sahiba. Qaim Khan started by modifying the alliances made by his father. Internally he distanced himself from his father’s intimates. The chelas became less important as he invited in the Afridi Afghans and made them the main base of his power. He also replaced the court from Farrukhabad to his personal fort at Amethi. At the Delhi court, Qaim Khan switched sides from the so-called Turani party, to the Irani, newly appointed wazìr, the governor of Awadh, Safdar Jang. The latter produced for him an imperial farmàn which made over to him the entire territory of the Rohillas. In order to enforce this imperial order the Bangash chief marched into Rohilkhand. In a very short time he collected a force of 50,000 horse and foot, besides the contingents of his Bangash relations, all provided with elephants, and another 20,000 volunteers under neighbouring zamìndàrs and Maratha freebooters. In spite of this massive force, the Bangash troops were defeated by the superior mobility of the Rohilla cavalry and the immense firing power of their infantry. Qaim Khan himself and many of the other Bangash and Afridi leaders were killed, sitting as open targets in their haudas on their elephants.57 As a result of this defeat, the Bangash Nawabs lost all the provinces north of the Ganges to the Rohillas. Moreover, without a strong leadership, Farrukhabad now risked being annexed to Awadh since Safdar Jang had only awaited an opportune moment. As Farrukhabad became more and more hemmed in between the troops and intrigues of its enemies, the Bangash Pathans rallied around their new leader Ahmad Khan, who started to collect funds by putting pressure on all the nearby merchants and bankers. Also the still powerful and
Bangash’s Letters to Nizam-ul-Mulk”, Proceedings of the Indian History Conference (1967), pp. 176–85. 57 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, pp. 380–1.
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wealthy Afridis supported him with cash on the condition that he would grant their leader, Rustam Khan, half of the territories that would be recovered. The result of this general subscription was gathered and publicly displayed in one of the Nawab’s tents. Everybody willing to be enrolled in the Bangash service was allowed to take from it: one and a quarter anna for a footman, three annas for a horseman. As usual, the free military labour market again proved its smooth functioning: in no time an army was recruited of 12,000 horse and 12,000 foot. At the ensuing confrontation at Khudaganj (1750) Ahmad Khan had learned from his brother’s experience as he took a seat in his pàlkì, protected by the shield of his fellow Pathans. On the other side, Safdar Jang’s nà"ib and commander of his forces, Nawal Rai, was soon killed in his hauda, and perceiving what had happened, the whole army dispersed immediately. Because of their sudden retreat the plunder from the enemy’s camp was enormous. Here, several wealthy merchants, still playing cards in their tents, were overwhelmed and subsequently blackmailed. As everybody wanted to be part of the victory, the morning after the “battle” the Bangash army had swollen to even 60,000. At the next showdown, Safdar Jang’s army was again defeated, this time mainly because a large parts of its vanguard, under the command of Kamgar Khan Baluch, had been secretly in league with the Bangash and suddenly defected from the Awadh ranks. Since his main rival Rustam Khan Afridi was killed in one of the few encounters, Ahmad Khan had gained a double triumph as he was now the sole Afghan leader without openly having to share his territory. By winning these two battles, Ahmad Khan had clearly regained the initiative. In order to cash in these successes he now sent his agents to Awadh, Allahabad and Benares. After the bankers of the latter had paid a sufficient na£r of 2 crores Benares was left untouched and its raja, Balwant Singh, was bestowed with the Nawab’s ¶il'at. Nevertheless, Awadh and Allahabad he had to take by force.58 In 1751, Ahmad Khan was clearly at the height of his power. He now could boast a following of nearly 100,000 men and access to a territory, equal to nearly 4 or 5 ßùbas. Obviously, Safdar Jang, but also the emperor and the other imperial nobles began to feel a bit
58
For a detailed account of these events, see Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, pp. 60–77.
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worried as they felt that Ahmad Khan could not possibly be refrained from proclaiming himself independent king. Consequently, a mammoth alliance of the emperor, Safdar Jang, the Jats and the Marathas, secretly endorsed by the Rohilla leader Hafiz Rahmat Khan, was created against him. Learning about what had happened, Ahmad Khan immediately retreated his army into his own territories and entrenched himself at his fort of Fatehgarh. On his way back, he had lost most of his following as many of his mercenaries saw no further profit in taking up a strong resistance with him. Meanwhile, he had asked for help from the Rohillas and Sa"ad al-Lah Khan, obviously without the backing of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, marched in the direction of Fatehgarh to support the Afghan cause. What followed was a protracted siege during which endless negotiations were held. After a while, Sa"ad al-Lah Khan suddenly retreated from the scene and returned with his troops to Rohilkhand. Ahmad Khan left alone facing fearful odds, immediately decided to follow the example of his former ally. The following year after the monsoon, the Maratha and Awadh forces entered Rohilkhand but the Afghans had withdrawn already into the Tarai jungle at the foot of the Himalayas. During this campaign, news arrived from the west that Ahmad Shah Durrani had entered the Panjab in order to assist his endangered tribesmen. Feeling a growing uneasiness about the whole situation, especially the Marathas became very keen on arriving at a rapid peace settlement. Both parties agreed that Ahmad Khan would be restored in his former position although he had to pass half of his territory to the Marathas. The latter were allowed to extract 30 lakh rupees. from these lands but subsequently had to hand this sum over again to the Bangash.59 From 1752 to 1770, as most leaders lived in a continuous awe of potential Durrani invasions, large parts of Hindustan experienced a period of relative calm. Durrani and Maratha incursions were redirected to the Delhi-Agra region south of the Ganges which left the major northern successor states of Rohilkhand, Farrukhabad, and Awadh undisturbed. This was even so for large tracks in the Doab, mainly under variable Afghan, Jat and Maratha rule. As we have observed before, the Durrani campaigns engendered new prospects
59
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, pp. 77–123.
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for military service but also of long distance trade as new markets were opened up for Hindustani goods in Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia. Besides, the successor states in northern India could strengthen their position thanks to a renewed and sure supply of war-horses and manpower from the Durrani territories. What might in retrospect be concluded about the Bangash Nawab’s relations with the imperial court and the status he derived from this? From the time of his rise to the manßabdàrì status in 1712, Muhammad Khan had been constantly engaged in the court politics of Delhi. Although the Bangash Nawab, like fellow Afghan Ali Muhammad Khan Rohilla, has been frequently related to the Turani faction at court, this point should not be overstated. Muhammad Khan started his career by being attached to the parvenu Saiyid brothers under Farrukhsiyar. At the right time, following the declining star of the Saiyids, the Bangash Nawab switched his loyalty from them to the Turani noble Muhammad Amin Khan, Itimad al-Daula. During his campaigns in the Deccan he, obviously, tried with fair words to placate Nizam al-Mulk to his side by stressing his traditional bond with the Turanis and the Muslim mission of jihàd. In practice, however, this seems to be only a matter of articulation and form. In 1747, Muhammad Khan’s successor Qaim Khan thought it opportune to change sides again because, this time, the Irani noble Safdar Jang had become the imperial wazìr and an alliance with him held out many new promises. And indeed, as related before, Safdar Jang now procured for his new Bangash ally an imperial farmàn in which Rohilkhand was entirely made over to him. In general we may say that loyalties at the royal court remained always extremely conditional and uncertain. This was as true for the so-called Irani and Turani factions as for the Afghan solidarity feelings: defection was the rule, patriotism the exception.60 How did the involvement in Mughal politics affect the Nawab’s prestige at home and amongst his fellow Afghans? Muhammad Khan Bangash had risen to a first-grade manßàbdàr and ßùbadàr over important provinces like Allahabad and Malwa. However, to his contem-
60 Cf. for example: J. Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Vol. 1: 1739–1754 (London, 1988), p. 250; Z. Malik, A Mughal Statesman of the Eighteenth Century, Khan-i Dauran, Mir Bakhshi of Muhammad Shah 1719–1739 (Aligarh, 1973), p. 56; R. Joshi, The Afghan Nobility and the Mughals, 1526–1707 (New Delhi, 1985), p. 195.
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poraries he continued to make a rather plain and soldier-like impression. He always wore clothes of the coarsest stuff and in his audience hall and his house the only carpets were rows of common mats. On these mats the Nawab sat together with his fellow Pathans and chelas and all other persons and guests high or low, all enjoying the same simple meal of pilào. At these occasions the Nawab always excused himself as being merely a soldier. The contemporaries were amazed to observe so much discrepancy between his great wealth and power and the simplicity of his personal habits. This roughness and general lack of adab sometimes could become rather embarrassing, in particular during imperial audiences at court, most notably in 1739 when he had to present himself before Nadir Shah, and had to live up to the expectations of one of the principal nobles at the imperial court. Muhammad Khan’s clumsiness in matters of courtly etiquette was articulated by the fact that he pretended not to understand a single word of Persian, for which he had to be accompanied by one of his sons.61 Clearly, first and foremost, Muhammad Khan considered himself a soldier among soldiers, a Pathan among Pathans. The second generation of the Bangash family was much more cultivated and fully acclimatized to the Nawabi lifestyle and the etiquette and ceremony of the Indo-Persian court. Muhammad Khan’s successor Qaim Khan on occasions used to adorn his personal fort of Amethi sumptuously with canopies of precious broadcloth and gold curtains. No one’s horse, pàlkì or elephant was allowed to enter into the fort and all visitors had to dismount at the gate.62 Ahmad Khan Bangash, even lived for much of his time in Delhi where he enjoyed a luxurious life and started to collect precious books and pictures from the imperial stores.63 His increased engagement at the Delhi court was also reflected in his appointments as mìr-ba¶shì and first noble of the reign: amìr al-umarà. Ahmad Khan began to consider himself as the leader of the IndoAfghan nobility. The Rohilla leaders more or less acknowledged, albeit grudgingly, his first-rate status as being a principal Mughal
61
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, pp. 332, 338. Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 373. 63 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787”, ff. 148–92. 62
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manßabdàr.64 The Rohillas were not allowed to marry his daughters, were offered his ¶il 'ats and had to accept his precedence in protocol. The Rohillas were generally looked down upon as parvenu slaves and horse merchants, whereas the Bangash, mostly seated on their elephants, regarded themselves to be real Pathans entrusted with high manßabs earned through their gallant service to the imperial throne. This became particularly and visibly clear at general meetings and visits. In 1752, for example, Ahmad Khan sent his son Mahmud Khan together with Hafiz Rahmat Khan for peace negotiations to the wazìr Shuja al-Daula. Everything had to be neatly arranged in order to meet the requirements and sensitivities of everybody’s rank and status. On this occasion in front of the wazìr’s tent an enclosure was erected which consisted of three courts. On his way to meet the wazìr, the Nawab’s son was allowed to pass the first two courts on his elephant but at the third court he had to change for a pàlkì. Nevertheless, the other chiefs had to dismount their elephants already at the first, and to leave their pàlkì at the second court. After they had entered the third court on foot the young Nawab followed and was helped by them out of his pàlkì.65 Under Ahmad Khan even the Awadhi Nawab was considered to be of inferior rank.66 Obviously, this was strongly contested. After Shuja al-Daula’s defeats against the EIC in 1764 and 1765, he had to escape to Farrukhabad. Being a humble visitor of Ahmad Khan made him, however, extremely circumspect. In one of their meetings the Bangash chief took a pearl necklace, once worn by his brother Qaim Khan, and put it round Shuja’s neck. If he had accepted the gift it would have been interpreted as a clear sign of subservience, as a ¶il'at, and, naturally, Shuja was strongly irritated about it as he quickly took it off and left the place.67 The Durrani emperor confirmed the foremost position of the Bangash Nawabs. Although Ahmad Khan had attended slowly and with only a very small force to support the Durrani forces at Panipat,
64 Nur al-Din Husain Khan Fakhri, [Tawàrìkh], Islamic Culture, 7,3 (1933), p. 433; Ghulam Hasan Samin Bilgrami, Indian Antiquary, 36 (1907), p. 15. For Rohilla aversion, see Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 1, p. 376; 2, p. 128. 65 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, p. 115. 66 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Letter mother Muzaffar Jang, 14 March 1787”, f. 518. 67 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, pp. 144–5.
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Ahmad Shah bestowed large plots of land in the Doab on him and at court he gave him the right of first entry, preceding all of the other amìrs.68 Later, however, the overall status of the Bangash chiefs declined again, since, on the one hand, the Durranis started to raise the power and pretensions of the Rohilla generalissimo Najib alDaula and, on the other hand, the Mughals became more and more reliant on their eastern vassals: Shuja al-Daula and the East India Company. All in all, in spite of their proper nasab and strong regional powerbase, the legitimate authority of the Bangash Nawabs, both inside and outside their own territories, still required Mughal or, to a lesser extent, Durrani sanction. The Bangash had gained their supremacy and their territory thanks to their naukarì services to the Mughals and, with that, had acquired rank and status within the Mughal hierarchy. This had amply increased their standing amongst their fellow Afghans, not only because of imperial recognition but also because through their patrons they could perhaps get access to court politics and to imperial farmàns and sanads. Obviously, the Bangash Nawabs being completely embedded into the existing Mughal hierarchy had much to loose and only hesitantly answered to the Durrani claims of imperial sovereignty. Decline Towards the end of his lifetime, Ahmad Khan became blind and more than before relied entirely on his principal chela and ba¶shì, Fakhr al-Daula. When he died in 1771 the Nawabi succession became hotly contested. Ahmad Khan’s oldest son, Mahmud Khan, born from the Nawab’s principal begam, was considered the only legitimate son. He had died, however, some years before and his son, Himmat Khan, was still a minor. Ahmad Khan’s second son was Dilir Himmat Khan alias Muzaffar Jang. He was only fifteen years old and his mother, although she claimed Lodi descent, was regarded as a mere slave girl from the zanàna. However, Muzaffar Jang’s claims to the masnad were propagated and endorsed by Fakhr alDaula against the wishes of the late Nawab’s brothers. The ensuing conflict was decided by Muzaffar Jang’s mother who handed over
68
Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, p. 128.
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70,000 gold muhrs from her treasury to the chela.69 He also melted down all the silver of the haudas and other furniture.70 With this money he was able to hire a sufficient following to checkmate the other Pathans and to pay a proper na£r to the Mughal emperor, who subsequently acknowledged the legitimacy of Muzaffar Jang’s succession. Initially, the new Nawab was under the complete control of Fakhr al-Daula. The chela tried to improve the financial position of the state by reducing the army and by raising the revenue on the rich. This policy brought him in conflict with the other great chelas of the court and influential Pathans, who, in a coalition with the young Nawab, succeeded in killing him. This temporary coalition again brought the old Pathan nobility to the fore, as Ahmad Khan’s brother Khudabanda Khan now managed to dominate state affairs.71 Meanwhile, Farrukhabad had become increasingly involved in the politics and intrigues of the Awadhi court. During the years 1771–4, Muzaffar Jang had taken part in Shuja al-Daula’s campaigns against the Marathas and the Rohillas, which recovered much of the lost territories in the Doab. Shuja, however, played upon the Nawab’s authority problems at home and managed to annex not only all the lands in the Doab but large parts of Farrukhabad state as well. In return, he had been willing to support the claims of Muzaffar Jang against his Pathan rivals. In 1774, with the help of Awadhi troops, Muzaffar Jang ousted his uncle Khudabanda Khan and numerous other Pathans from Farrukhabad and Mau and posted his own officials in their place. Although Nawabi rule appeared to have been fully restored, Muzaffar Jang had become totally indebted to the Awadhi court. This new relationship also found its reflection during one of the Nawab’s visits to Awadh, where he joined in the Muharram festivities and openly converted to Shiite Islam.72 In 1775, the new Awadh ruler, Asaf al-Daula, decided to make no further bones about it and wanted to seize the entire Farrukhabad territory. Due to the mediation of the British agent in Lucknow this
69 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787”, ff. 148–92. 70 Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, p. 154. 71 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787”, ff. 148–92. 72 Atkinson, Statistical, Descriptive and Historical Account, p. 174.
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was avoided but instead it was agreed that Farrukhabad had to pay an annual tribute (na£ràna) of 4.5 lakhs, the payment of which was to be supervised by a Lucknow agent (sazàwal ) present at Farrukhabad. In addition, a deputy to the Nawab (nà"ib) was to be appointed to control the Nawab’s affairs. In fact, the sazàwal started to control the revenue affairs of the Nawab and in due course became the de facto ruler in Farrukhabad. The niyàbat was a major fund raiser as it became an office which could be directly purchased in Lucknow and, as a result, personal changes occurred frequently.73 All in all, in 1775 Farrukhabad had lost almost three quarters of its former territory, and its revenue had fallen from about 60 to 40 lakh in 1761 to about 10 lakh in 1775.74 Farrukhabad had changed from a major Sunni Indo-Afghan power into a minor Shiite puppet state of Awadh. In the wake of the Awadh intervention, the East India Company also entered Farrukhabad politics and as a tributary state of Awadh it was incorporated into the British subsidiary political system. In 1777 British troops were stationed in Fatehgarh and three years later a British agent was send to Farrukhabad to take charge of the annual tribute, which was now earmarked for the Company’s treasury. As such, the British resident replaced the sazàwal as manager of the Nawab’s finances. In the 1780’s the state of the latter had been worsened again. The court and its household had become isolated from the rest of the state and the incoming revenue had further decreased. According to the British resident, John Willes, this was due to the fact that: “the Pathans seized and enclosed whatever land they chose, the aumils absconded, the zamìndàrs resisted and the revenue of course fell down”. Only with the help of British troops, the Nawab was able to collect the revenue which was, however, increasingly siphoned off by the local zamìndàrs and revenue farmers who entrenched themselves in their mud forts. Because of the annexation of large territories by Awadh, many zamìndàrs controlled lands which overlapped
73 For a detailed account of these affairs, see OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787”, ff. 148–92. 74 For revenue figures, see Irvine, “The Bangash Nawabs”, 2, p. 157; OIOC, Add. 60337, Shee Papers, “Shee to Hastings, 15 July 1780”, no fol.; OIOC, Home Miscellaneous, 219, “Minute GG, 22 May 1780”, f. 541; OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/13, “Willes to GGC, 30 July 1786”, f. 550.
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the newly created borders. At the time of collection, most of them retreated with their assets across the border to Awadh. The borderlands, both in- and outside Farrukhabad state, were almost exclusively under the revenue farm of one of the principal eunuchs of the Lucknow court, Almas Ali Khan, who, obviously, protected his zamìndàrs and instigated them to escape the revenue authorities from Farrukhabad. Almas Ali Khan had even for some years been appointed as sazàwal himself during which time he had been able to strengthen his hold on the area and its zamìndàrs.75 From the perspective of Willes: I have every where found the ryotts and lesser zemeedars poor and oppressed whilst the wealthy possessed of strong holds have opposed government by open force and only paid the most moderate rents [and] the whole country will be divided between the neighbouring powerful aumils, the refracting zamindars and banditti of robbers; and the Patans who might be made useful subjects will fly from the scene of anarchy.76
However, to the British resident, this state of so-called utter anarchy and confusion was entirely the fault of the Nawab and his personal ambiance of fraudulent and dissimulative chelas. The Nawab, he opined: is inclined to keep the generality of his relations in the most abject poverty and to squander whatever he can get on a set of worthless and abandoned cheelahs. To preserve to the Nabob from their rapacious hands any considerable sum has been a difficult task. They have claimed with tumult assignments on the country and the Nabob, whose disposition is a compound of imbecility, cunning and malevolence, has been happy in distressing his diwan by the grant of their demands. It is and has been long the misfortune of this country, that whoever in office endeavours to render the Nabob respectable, or restore his country to order is sure of experiencing every opposition.77
75 OIOC, L/Parl/2/20, House of Commons, “Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, 4 April 1786”, p. 5; Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Willes to GG&C, 10 February 1787”, f. 117ff. 76 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/13, “Willes to GG&C, 30 July 1786”, f. 551; OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Military Consultations, P/A/8, “Willes to GG&C, 24 April 1785”, ff. 340–56. 77 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/13, “Willes to GGC, 30 July 1786”, f. 551.
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Willes was particularly exasperated about the decadence of the Nawab’s lifestyle. After three generations there appeared to be not much left of the former soldatesque image of the first Bangash Nawab. Again, Willes was of the opinion that all the intrigue at court and the abstention of the landholders originated from the “imbecility and folly” of the Nawab, who: ridiculous as it may appear, from the time that he rises, which is not till three in the evening, he is solely occupied in blowing thro’ a tube for the purpose of increasing the heat of a blowing furnace which he has been persuaded convert copper into gold.78
Obviously, the Nawab had a different view about what had gone wrong. According to his own analysis, the main trouble was Awadhi and British interference. The sazàwals and British residents had deprived him from all his means to support his relatives and following. Besides, the brutality of Willes had been an affront and an open challenge to his status and authority. He had not only sold the Nawab’s guns and elephants but he had also insulted him by installing his brother as nà"ib. As the Nawab pointed out: It is an established principle among the chiefs in Hindostan, not to entrust the management, or control as naib of their affairs, to their own brother or son, on account of several apprehensions.79
General unrest was also caused by the unemployment of his fellow Pathan chiefs. Due to the expansion of the Pax Britannica the Nawab could not any longer direct their attention to raids outside his own territories. For the Pathan mercenaries there was a general loss of employment. Hence, dissatisfaction among the Pathans increased and could only turn inwardly against the ruling Nawab. In order to appease them he begged the Company authorities to be allowed to raise a larger regiment on a permanent footing.80 In short, however, his solution was fairly simple: in order to end the general distress
78 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/14, “Willes to GG&C, 3 October 1786”, f. 253. 79 OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, “Muzaffar Jang to GG, 12 February 1787”, f. 106. 80 OIOC, Home Miscellaneous, 219, “Minute GG, 22 May 1780”, f. 565. Similar pleas were raised by the Nawab of Rampur. For general unemployment among the Afghans a few decades later, see R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, From Calcutta to Bombay (London, 1828), p. 138.
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and to increase his income he had to be relieved from all further British and Awadh involvement. Although the Nawab’s point of view made much more sense than the unbalanced indignations of the British residents, the picture which they presented shows that it was already far too late for a real amelioration. The revenue of the state had shrunk to an utter minimum of 9 lakh. Almost all what had remained of the Farrukhabad territory was beyond Nawabi control. In general, there was no sharp decline in agricultural produce but the benefits remained in the pockets of the local zamìndàrs and ijàradàrs. The foremost revenue farmer, Almas Ali Khan, who acquired large territories in Farrukhabad, linking them to those in the Doab and Rohilkhand, started to carve out a principality of his own which held great attraction to the surrounding zamìndàrs and peasants. In addition, the general trade pattern of northern India had also changed radically with the expansion of British power and the demise of the Rohilla state. Long-distance overland trade relations with the west were interrupted and the important Indo-Afghan horse trade was redirected to the south. Besides, trade was lured away from Farrukhabad towards the new local ganjs of Almas Ali Khan and various British army commanders.81 Also the slump in the naukarì trade of Rohilkhand and Farrukhabad affected the cash transports to the north-west and brought about unemployment and dissatisfaction among the Afghans. During the 1770’s and 80’s there was a overall lack of cash in the area and coin was strongly devaluated.82 Besides, the collapse of the Rohilla courts and trading network caused a general slump in the demand for luxury products and other consumer goods from the eastern and southern provinces. One of the main losers was the city of Farrukhabad which had been the central entrepôt linking the Indo-Afghan trading network to the east and the south. Governor-General Warren Hastings in 1780 expressed it as follows: the capital which but a very short time ago was distinguished as one of the most populous and opulent commercial cities in Hindostan at present exhibit nothing but scenes of the most wretched poverty, desolation and misery.83
81 NAI, Foreign and Political Dept., S, No. 3, “Nabob Vizier to Rajah Gobind Ram, 15 February 1781”. 82 OIOC, Add. 60337, Shee Papers, n.d, “Shee to Wheler”, no fol.; NAI, Foreign and Political Department, S, No. 1, “Bristow to GG&C, 29 July 1776”. 83 OIOC, Home Miscellaneous, 219, “Minute GG, 22 May 1780”, ff. 543–4.
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Only later during the century many of the losses were compensated by increased trade in indigo, grain and cotton from the Doab and Rohilkhand, but now the general trade pattern had been completely turned upside down.84 Farrukhabad had become more and more incorporated into the eastern economies of Awadh, Bihar and Bengal as it became an important channel of communication with the now more peripheral areas of the Doab and Rohilkhand. Again, economic redirection had coincided with political and even religious realignments. As trade became reoriented to the east, the IndoAfghan courts turned from their Sunni Afghan allegiances with the Durranis and Rohillas in the west, towards full Shiite Irani affiliations to Awadh in the east. The tributary relation with Awadh was ended in 1801 when the annual na£ràna was directly transferred to the Company. One year later the Nawab ceded the entire sovereignty of Farrukhabad to the British government who settled upon him and his heirs an annual stipend of 108,000 rupees.
Conclusion Slaves in India The history of the Bangash Nawabs is an interesting case study of Indian military slavery. In fact, it represents a last flickering of a sixcentury old phenomenon. The first Muslim raids into India in the twelfth century and the eventual conquest and occupation of Hindustan at the end of the thirteenth century was for a great deal accomplished by Turkish mamlùks or bandagàn in the service of the Ghaznavid and Ghurid dynasties in Afghanistan and Khorasan. As a result, the Turko-Persian blend of the mamlùk system was introduced in India through Ghaznavid and Ghurid channels and became the mainstay of the Delhi Sultanates until it underwent a perceptible decline from the fourteenth century onwards.85 Indigenous elements became
84 For a general survey of Farrukhabad trade in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth century, see A Siddiqi, Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State (Oxford, 1973); and C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townmen and Bazaars, North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Cambridge, 1983). 85 A. Wink, Al-Hind. The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. 1: Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam 7th–11th Centuries (Leiden, 1990), p. 23.
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increasingly important, first as elite slaves themselves but later as free Muslim or Hindu allies. Therefore in India, the mamlùk system was only for a relatively short time able to succeed and as such it always remained a predominantly Middle Eastern phenomenon, only incidentally imported, but never completely at home in the Indian setting. Under the Mughals, slaves played a minor part in the central administration and the army. Akbar employed, however, a small amount of household slaves which he started to call chelas because he disliked the term bandagàn (banda meaning slave) under which heading mamlùks were called during the Delhi Sultanate. According to Abul Fazl, he believed that mastership belonged to no one but God and therefore he borrowed the name chela from the Hindu bhakti and the indianised Sufi tradition, signifying the complete attachment of a faithful disciple or pupil (chela or murìd ) to a holy man ( guru or pìr). Here the relationship is not one of ownership but one of unqualified and unconditional love. In due course, though, chela became the current Indian name for a mamlùk-like or ∞ulàm-like slave. This departure from a thoroughly Turko-Persian, Islamic expression reflected not only the decreased importance of slaves under the Mughals but also Akbar’s reorientation to a thoroughly indianised, Indo-Islamic culture.86 It is beyond the scope of this essay to explain India’s short-lived and incidental experience of the mamlùk system into full detail, but it seems that at the root of it lies the prevalence of a very extensive, free military labour market on the subcontinent as driven by naukarì. In principle, this notion of naukarì, being the free, negotiable service to one’s patron-employer, appears to stand in juxtaposition to the idea of slavery, being the enforced, unconditional service to one’s master-owner. At the same time, though, both notions of service stood at right angles with the emotional loyalty based on kinship ties and religious conviction. In other words, the loyalties and alliances based on naukarì and military slavery had a simple cold logical outlook based on calculated selfish best interests and devoid of tribal and religious biases. This was also the prevailing attitude at India’s military labour market in which the loyalty of allies was not so much directed at their patron’s tribe or person, but more at his
86
Abul Fazl, The A’in-i Akbari, Vol. 1, trans. H. Blochmann, H.S. Jarrett (New Delhi, 1977–8), pp. 263–4.
NAUKARì
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purse. Of course, the idiom of tribe, religion or caste played its role in the formation and rationalisation of alliances but what strikes most is the repeated tendency to cut across rigid party lines. This extreme pragmatic, no-nonsense attitude of Indian politics was underpinned by the sheer endless availability of both cheap military labour and ready cash to pay for it. In these circumstances, naukarì made slavery almost superfluous and rather expensive in comparison with selftrained free retainers. Moreover, the imprinted loyalty of the chela itself continuously tended to dissolve into the conditional naukarì alliance of the free mercenary. Nonetheless, during the eighteenth century we still find chelas, some of them eunuchs, entrusted with important positions at the local Indian courts, most notably in Awadh and the Afghan principalities of Rohilkhand and Bhopal.87 Among the Afghans, the number of chelas which one was able to sustain, to a large extent contributed to their overall status.88 They were, however, not employed on a large scale and, as a rule, were recruited locally. Outside India, however, the mamlùk institution was still flourishing and at some places even found renewed vigour as under the Durranis in Afghanistan, the Mamluk Pashaliq of Baghdad,89 the Bu Said Sultanate of Muscat,90 and the Uzbek Ming Khanate of Khoqand.91 In eighteenth-century India, there are only two examples of the large scale recruitment of chelas. The case of the Nawabs of Mysore, who not only recruited from local sources but also bought military slaves from Karim Khan Zand’s Persia, is interesting but still awaits further examination.92 The other exception is the chela system of Farrukhabad.
87 For the chelas at the court of Awadh, see M.N. Fisher, A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, the British and the Mughals (New Delhi, 1987), pp. 53–6; at Bhopal, see J. Malcolm, A Memoir of Central India (London, 1823), p. 121. 88 Wendel, Les Mémoires, p. 118. 89 T. Nieuwenhuis, Politics and Society in Early Modern Iraq (Den Haag, 1982), p.13,25 (mainly Georgians and Circassians). 90 Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (London, 1987), p. 37 (mainly Africans and Baluchis). 91 T. Saguchi, “The Eastern Trade of the Khoqand Khanate”, Memoirs of Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 24 (1965), p. 64 (more than 20.000, mainly Kirghiz). 92 M. Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India (Madras, 1869), Vol. 1, pp. 406–7, 527, Vol. 2, p. 392.
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Slaves in Farrukhabad The case of Farrukhabad epitomises India’s experience with military slavery. Being introduced from a Turko-Persian context, military slaves were highly instrumental in conquering and establishing a new homeland for their Afghan masters. Initially, slaves served well to counterbalance the power of the Pathan chiefs. At the same time, as implied by the label chela, slavery was reformulated in indigenous Indian terms focussing on Rajput heroism and spiritual devotion. Meanwhile, on the imperial level, the Bangash Nawabs were most successfully beginning to exploit the endless opportunities offered by naukarì. This gained them enormous riches and honours which further strengthened their position both in Farrukhabad and among the Mughal nobility. In this situation, slavery lost a great deal of its appeal as even the chelas themselves could hardly be expected to withstand the immense gravitational force of the military labour market. The end of the eighteenth century, though, witnesses a sudden slump in the Nawab’s naukarì trade. At the same time, we are faced with a remarkable revival of the Farrukhabad chelas. Being deprived of its extensive external military service networks, the court now increasingly turned in on itself, giving free reign to the “indoor” chelas and begams in control of the domestic treasury besides to all kinds of new businessmen in charge of collecting the local land revenue. The intervention by Awadh and the British further undermined the external reach and the internal legitimacy of the Nawab. So within half a century, the rustic image of the courageous warrior Muhammad Khan, loyally served by his hero-chela Dilir Khan, changed into the decadent picture of the effeminate dandy Muzaffar Jang, treacherously manipulated by his courtier-chela Fakhr al-Daula. Far from being a colonial construction only,93 this “orientalised” picture—indeed created by the British residents at Farrukhabad—was also a factual indication that the days of the free military labour market of northern India were numbered.
93 For a discussion of this aspect, see R. O’Hanlon, “Issues of Masculinity in North Indian History: The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad”, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 4,1 (1997), pp. 1–19.
THE LEGITIMATION OF KINGSHIP IN INDIA: BUNDELKHAND Godard Schokker
1 Between North India and the Deccan lies the extensive range of hills called Bundelkhand. From the tenth century till the early part of the thirteenth century this region was dominated by the Candela dynasty.1 After that local tribal chiefs styling themselves Bundelas gradually extended their control over Bundelkhand. In the sixteenth century the Bundelas exercised power over Bundelkhand. From that time more becomes known about their history. During this period the main Bundelas are in chronological order: Rudrapratàpa (1501– 1531), Bhàraticaµda (1531–1554), Madhukara •àha (1554–1592), Ràma •àha (1592–1605) and Bìramsiµha (1605–1627).2 Since the fourteenth century Ga‰hakuµ∂àra, 30 miles north-east to Jhàµsì, had been the capital of the Bundelas. But in 1531, the last year of his reign, Rudrapratàpa moved his capital to O‰chà situated on the river Betavà which flows into the Yamunà. This geographical position of O‰chà seems to have been more convenient for the purpose of trade and to have offered a better prospect of participating in the economic development of that time. During the sixteenth century the history of the Bundelas who came more and more to the front, became closer interwoven with that of the contemporary sultans of Delhi: Ibràhìm Lodì (1517–1526), the Mughals Bàbar (1526–1530), Humàyun (1530–1540; 1555–1556), Akbar (1556–1605) and Jahàµgìr (1605–1627), as also the Afghan •era •aha who in 1540 dethroned Humàyun and ruled until 1545, the year of his death. The Bundelas constantly had to confront the
1 For the history of the Candelas see H.C. Ray, The Dynastic History of Northern India (Early Mediaeval Period) (Calcutta, 1931–1936), Part 2, pp. 666–737. 2 The dates mentioned here have been taken from C.E. Luard, Orchha State Gazetteer (Lucknow 1907), pp. 17–22. Their historicity, however, is not quite certain.
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sultans of Delhi, which usually resulted in an agreement with which the Bundelas were recognized by the sultans as their vassals. In its early phase the historiography of the Bundelas consists of genealogies written in Braj, a variant of Hindi. These Braj genealogies can be supplemented and partly verified by data from Persian sources. Two genealogists are known: (1) the poet Ke≤avadàsa (1555– 1617) who was attached to the Bundela court at O‰chà, and (2) Gore Làla or Làla Kavi (1646–1714), the poet laureate of king Chatrasàla (1649–1731), who belonged to a collateral branch of the Bundela dynasty and resided at Pannà, south-east of Khajuraho famous for its temples. Since Gore Làla lived at a later time than Ke≤avadàsa, the genealogy of the former covers a longer period than that of the latter. In addition, it is more extensive. In several other respects, too, the two genealogies are different. They have in common that they serve the purpose of legitimising Bundela kingship, and that they do so from a religious point of view. But Ke≤avadàsa has a more deliberate and coherent conception of Bundela kingship than Gore Làla has. For this reason I shall take Ke≤avadàsa’s genealogy as my starting point.
2 Ke≤avadàsa’s conception of Bundela kingship is marked by the Bhaktimovement of that age. Bhakti literally means “participation” and is used to express a relationship between man and god which bears a personal character and is based on mutual love. Bhakti can, therefore, best be understood in the sense of love of god. It was especially directed at Ràma and K‰ß»a as incarnations of the god Viß»u. In this connection it may be observed that these two incarnations show a structural difference, on the one hand, and are complementary, on the other. While Ràma is a king/god, K‰ß»a is a pastoral deity. As king Ràma belongs to the established society and has the responsibility of maintaining the dharma, the moral order of society. That means that he is bound to the dharma. On the other hand, K‰ß»a as cowherd belongs to the wilderness and is outside of the established society so that he by nature transcends the dharma. Bhakti in itself is already known from ancient times. But in the sixteenth century it experienced a strong revival and rapidly spread all over North India. In Bundelkhand Vindhyavàsinì Devì, “The
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goddess dwelling in the Vindhya”, had from of old been the general object of worship, and in particular the clan deity (Kula-devì) of the Bundelas.3 She was a local form of Devì, “The [great] goddess”, the spouse of the god •iva and regarded as his •akti, “Energy”. Her cult was centred in Vindhyàcala, 5 miles to the west of Mirzapur situated to the south of Benares, the ancient bulwark of •ivaïsm. But with a view to gaining a place in the general religious constellation of the sixteenth century, about the middle of that century the Bundelas in the person of the then king Madhukara •àha changed over to Bhakti. As a result, in O‰chà a process of Viß»uisation started which at the end of the sixteenth century and in the beginning of the seventeenth century led Ke≤avadàsa as the court poet of the Bundelas to set their kingship in the perspective of Bhakti. For this purpose he utilized a carefully considered synthesis of the Ràma-bhakti and the K‰ß»a-bhakti in accordance with which the structural difference between the king/god Ràma and the pastoral deity K‰ß»a as well as their simultaneous complementariness enabled him to gain an all-embracing conception of Bundela kingship.
3 Ke≤avadàsa does not put his conception of Bundela kingship in the form of a ready-made theory. This conception rather is to be inferred from his works in general and his genealogy of the Bundelas in particular. Ke≤avadàsa wrote 9 works in all which according to their genre may be classified as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Formalized K‰ß»a-lyrics in the form of two poetics. Ràma-epics. Metrics, especially as an appendix to the Ràma-epics. Panegyric with an allegorical tendency. Allegorical drama.
It is outside of my present purpose to go into each of Ke≤avadàsa’s works separately. Characteristic of his works is that they show a 3 The earliest known work which mentions Vindhyavàsinì Devì is the Harivaµ≤a (10246), a supplement to the Mahàbhàrata. See Nimáichandra Siromani et al., The Mahábhárata, an Epic Poem written by the Celebrated Veda Vyása Rishi (Calcutta, 1839), Part 4.
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combination of the two current genres of Bhakti-poetry with the panegyrical genre of bardic literature. The panegyric genre in its nature is destined for the purpose of singing the praises of either the Bundelas themselves or Jahàµgìr as their Mughal patron. But its allegorical tendency adds a dimension relating to Ke≤avadàsa’s conception of Bundela kingship to it. The two current genres of Bhakti-poetry, though indirectly, are also connected with this conception. For in his Ràma-epics and K‰ß»a-lyrics Ke≤avadàsa gives a literary form to the two components of Bhakti whose synthesis underlies his conception of Bundela kingship. It is noteworthy that he puts his K‰ß»alyrics in the form of two poetics. In this connection it is well to remember that K‰ß»a as a pastoral deity at the same time is a divine lover, with the result that K‰ß»a-lyrics by nature bears the character of a numinous emotionality. Ke≤avadàsa, therefore, aims at making K‰ß»a-lyrics controllable and effective for his conception of Bundela kingship by systematizing it according to the Sanskrit theory of literary esthetics.4 Ke≤avadàsa’s genealogy of the Bundelas is found in the following three works:5 1. Kavipriyà I, 6–61. 2. Vìracaritra III, 20–54. 3. Vijnànagìtà I, 15–27. The Vijnànagìtà, “Song of praise to true knowledge” (1610), is an allegorical drama and for several reasons of interest. But since its Bundela genealogy is strictly speaking not a genealogy, this work can be left out of consideration. The Kavipriyà, “Beloved of the poets” (1601), is one of the two poetics in which Ke≤avadàsa systematizes K‰ß»a-lyrics and treats of the theory of the figures of speech (alaµkàra≤àstra). The Bundela genealogy serves as an introduction to this work. This in itself already points to the connection that exists between
4 For Ke≤avadàsa’s canonization of Braj K‰ß»a-lyrics, see G.H. Schokker, “De gemeenschap van de kenners tegenover de goddelijke luisteraar. De literaire esthetica van het Sanskrit en de expressie van liefde voor de god K‰ß»a in het werk van de Hindi dichter Ke≤avadàsa”, in W.L. Idema (ed.), De vorsten van het woord. Teksten over dichterschap en po‰zie uit Oosterse tradities. Studies en vertalingen (Amsterdam, 1983), pp. 77–97. 5 These works have not yet been translated. For an edition of their original text, see Vi≤vanàthaprasàda Mi≤ra, Ke≤ava-Graµthàvalì (Allahabad 1954–1959), 3 pts.
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Ke≤avadàsa’s formalized K‰ß»a-lyrics and his conception of Bundela kingship. The Vìracaritra, “Deeds of Vìra” (1606), is an eulogy on the above-mentioned king Bìrasiµha and, like Ke≤avadàsa’s other panegyrical works, has an allegorical tendency. The work starts with a long dispute between Lobha and Dàna, the respective personifications of desire and charity, who blame each other for ruining the world. In the end this dispute is settled when Lobha appeals to the Vedànta tenet of the identity of giver and receiver. With this he introduces the Bundela genealogy told by him to Dàna.6 From a comparison of the genealogies of the Kavipriyà and the Vìracaritra it appears that Ke≤avadàsa adapted the former for the latter. In what follows I shall start with the genealogy of the Kavipriyà and supplement it with data from the genealogy of the Vìracaritra. In doing so I shall fix my attention on the opening passages from the two genealogies which are of particular importance to understanding Ke≤avadàsa’s conception of Bundela kingship.
4 In the Kavipriyà Ke≤avadàsa starts the Bundela genealogy with the following three stanzas (I, 6–8): At the request of Brahmà and the other gods Ràmacaµdra manifested his incarnation in the solar race of kings in order to remove the whole burden of the earth. In his family, says Ke≤avadàsa, king Bìra, an enemy of the Kali-yuga, brave in battle and provided with the fame of the Gaharavàras, was born. To him king Karana was born, who was the light of the dharma on this earth and after conquering the entire world made Benares his royal residence.
The first stanza contains the traditional formulation of Ràma’s incarnation according to which god Ràma became incarnate in order to remove the whole burden of the earth, i.e. to restore the dharma
6 See Vìracaritra II, 20 which in translation runs as follows: “O Dàna, receiver and giver are one and the same. Charity and desire have one and the same cause. In every body dwells one and the same soul. In the entire world shines one and the same form.”
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which had fallen into decline on the earth.7 This formulation of Ràma’s incarnation is connected with the Indian doctrine of the four yugas, “ages of the world”, which after the four throws in dicing are successively called K‰ta, Tretà, Dvàpara and Kali. The K‰ta-yuga is the golden age of primeval perfection in which the dharma reigns. Hence, in this age there is no need for a king. But in the subsequent three yugas in each of which the dharma declines with a quarter, a king is required for protecting mankind from moral chaos. In keeping with this theory, in the Tretà-yuga, the second age, god Ràma became incarnate as a king in order to restore the dharma on the earth. According to the second stanza the first Bundela, king Bìra, was born in Ràma’s family. Thus Ke≤avadàsa represents the Bundelas as lineal descendants of the king/god Ràma. This idea is one of the two pillars of Ke≤avadàsa’s conception of Bundela kingship. King Bìra is said to have been an enemy of the Kali-yuga, brave in battle and provided with the fame of the Gaharavàras. The Kali-yuga is the present and last age which is afflicted with moral chaos. King Bìra’s epithet “enemy of the Kali-yuga”, therefore, means that he— like his divine ancestor Ràma and in keeping with his function as king—maintained the dharma. Maintenance of the dharma and bravery in battle, king Bìra’s second feature, belong to the main virtues Ke≤avadàsa constantly credits the Bundelas with. In the stanza concerned he adds that king Bìra was provided with the fame of the Gaharavàras. This statement is closely connected with the third stanza, which informs us that the son of king Bìra, named Karana, after conquering the entire world made Benares his royal residence. Thus in the Kavipriyà Ke≤avadàsa represents the Gaharavàras as supplying the link between the Bundelas who lived in the present Kali-yuga and the king/god Ràma who had become incarnate in the long-gone Tretà-yuga. From history the Gaharavàras are known as contemporaries of the above-mentioned Candelas. While in the tenth century till the early part of the thirteenth century the Candelas
7 For the traditional motif of the Indian incarnation-doctrine, see P. Hacker, “Zur Entwicklung der Avatàra-Lehre”, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens, 4 (1960), pp. 47–70. For the treatment of this motif within the context of Bhakti see G.H. Schokker, “Die Menschwerdung Gottes in der Bhakti-Poesie”, in G. Oberhammer (ed.), Beiträge zur Hermeneutik indischer und abenländischer Religionstraditionen. Arbeidsdokumentation eines Symposiums, Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Wien, 1991), Band 537, pp. 213–29.
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ruled Bundelkhand to the south of the Ganges, in the same period the Gaharavàras ruled over a region to the north of the Ganges stretching from Kanauj up to and including Benares.8 Hence, side by side with Kanauj, Benares was a capital of the Gaharavàras.9 The statement of the Kavipriyà that king Karana made Benares his royal residence, may, therefore, be considered an allusion to that city as the capital of the Gaharavàras. Ke≤avadàsa’s claim that the Bundelas were descended from the Gaharavàras, will be discussed further on. In this connection it may suffice to point out that the sphere of influence of the Gaharavàras included the region of Avadha with its capital Ayodhyà which in the Tretà-yuga had been the territory of the king/god Ràma. By representing the Gaharavàras as the link between the Bundelas and Ràma, Ke≤avadàsa can, therefore, put his claim that the Bundelas in the Kali-yuga continued the kingship of their divine ancestor Ràma of the Tretà-yuga in a concrete, territorial form. Like in the Kavipriyà, in the Vìracaritra Ke≤avadàsa traces the Bundelas back to Ràma. But here he does so via Ku≤a, the elder of Ràma’s twin-sons. The passage concerned (II, 21–24c) runs as follows: At the same time that Ràma, after removing the whole burden of the earth and reforming the actions of all people, ascended to his Vaikuµøhaheaven, he transferred his kingship to Ku≤a. Then the whole town Ayodhyà became abandoned since everybody accompanied Ràma in his physical shape. Ku≤a, therefore, went to Ku≤asthalì and settled there as king of the world including the ocean. A son of Ku≤a’s family came into the area of Benares on the opposite side [of the Ganges] and took possession of it. At the sight of his handsomeness, virtues and good conduct the inhabitants of that city conferred kingship on him. This was the worthy king Bìrabhadra. To him king Bìra was born who had king Karana as son.
This information about Ràma’s son Ku≤a rests on an ancient tradition which already occurs in the Vàlmìki-Ràmàya»a.10 To the present subject it is of particular importance that Ku≤asthalì, “Ku≤a’s place”,
8
For the history of the Gaharavàras see Ray, The Dynastic History, 1, pp. 504–49. See Ray, The Dynastic History, 1, pp. 507–8. 10 See H. Jacobi, Das Ràmàya»a. Geschichte und Inhalt nebst Concordanz der gedruckten Recensionen (Bonn, 1893), p. 205. 9
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which in the Vàlmìki-Ràmàya»a is mentioned by the name of Ku≤avatì, is supposed to have been situated on the summit of the Vindhya. This suggests that Ke≤avadàsa used the tradition of the VàlmìkiRàmàya»a that Ku≤a transferred the seat of his reign from Ayodhyà to Ku≤avatì, to demonstrate that Ràma’s own son Ku≤a laid the foundation for Bundela kingship in Bundelkhand. According to the Vìracaritra the first Bundela as a son of Ku≤a’s family came into the area of Benares on the opposite side of the Ganges, took possession of it and on account of his excellent features was made king by the inhabitants of that city. Although, in contrast to the Kavipriyà, the passage of the Vìracaritra under discussion does not mention the Gaharavàras by name, it may be seen in the light of the fact that in the Kavipriyà the Bundelas and the Gaharavàras are expressly brought into connection. The development outlined in the Vìracaritra then comes to this that Ràma’s son Ku≤a laid the foundation for Bundela kingship in Bundelkhand, and that the first Bundela as a son of Ku≤a’s family again crossed the Ganges and became a Gaharavàra king of Benares. As regards this first Bundela, it is remarkable that in the Vìracaritra, unlike in the Kavipriyà, he is not called Bìra but Bìrabhadra, and that in the former work Bìra himself is said to be the son of Bìrabhadra. Both works have it that Karana is Bìra’s son. But while according to the Kavipriyà it was Karana who made Benares his royal residence, according to the Vìracaritra Bìrabhadra, Karana’s grandfather, had already become king of Benares. That Ke≤avadàsa in the Vìracaritra pushes up the Bundela genealogy with one generation, may be accounted for by the fact that according to the legend of the origin of the Bundelas which from of old had been current in Bundelkhand, Bìrabhadra holds a key position in their descent from the Gaharavàras. This legend centres in the above-mentioned cult of Vindhyavàsinì Devì as the clan deity and protectress of the Bundelas. Hence, the legend is diametrically opposed to Ke≤avadàsa’s own view that the Bundelas are lineal descendants of the king/god Ràma. As a result, he never breathes a word of it. But at the time of the conception of the Vìracaritra, the legend evidently still had such a great influence that in this work he felt obliged to show beyond question that Bìrabhadra who according to the legend took a key position in the relationship between the Bundelas and the Gaharavàras, was really a lineal descendant of Ràma.
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5 There exist different versions of the legend in question. But the earliest known version occurs in Gore Làla’s Bundela genealogy called Chatraprakà≤a, “Splendour of Chatra” (1714).11 Like the Vìracaritra, the Chatraprakà≤a traces the Bundelas via Ku≤a back to Ràma.12 But the two works also show distinct differences. Thus the Chatraprakà≤a lacks the tradition Ke≤avadàsa in the Vìracaritra took from the VàlmìkiRàmàya»a that Ku≤a transferred the seat of his reign from Ayodhyà to Ku≤avatì.13 Further the Vìracaritra mentions Bìrabhadra as the first son of Ku≤a’s family who became king of Benares. On the other hand, the Chatraprakà≤a represents Bìrabhadra as the last but one descendant of Ku≤a who as Gaharavàra king in fact still reigned in Benares.14 Finally the Vìracaritra has it that Bìrabhadra had Bìra as son. But according to the Chatraprakà≤a Bìrabhadra had two wives. To the first wife four unnamed sons were born, and to the second wife one son called Paµcama, “The fifth”, was born.15 After that the Chatraprakà≤a relates a legend which describes Paµcama as the actual founder of the Bundela dynasty by linking him up with Vindhyavàsinì Devì.16 According to this legend Paµcama was the favourite son of Bìrabhadra and, though being the youngest son, made by his father his heir. But on Bìrabhadra’s death Paµcama’s four brothers rebelled against him, dispossessed him of his properties and divided the kingdom into four parts. Thereupon Paµcama had recourse to Vindhyavàsinì Devì in her temple at Vindhyàcala and for a long time practised all sorts of severe asceticism in order to win her favour. Ultimately
11 This work has not yet been edited in its original Braj text but is only known from a translation by W.R. Pogson, A History of the Boondelas (Calcutta, 1828). 12 See Pogson, A History, pp. 4–5. 13 According to the Chatraprakà≤a (Pogson, A History, p. 5) Ku≤a and seven of his successive descendants stayed on at Ayodhyà and it was only Ku≤a’s eighth descendant who settled in Benares. However, the names of the descendants of Ku≤a’s as mentioned in the Chatraprakà≤a do not correspond with those as mentioned in an early Sanskrit standard work like the Viß»u Purà»a. Cf. H.H. Wilson, The Vishnú Purá…a, a System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition translated from the original Sanskrit and illustrated by Notes chiefly derived from other Purá…as (London, 1840), p. 386. 14 See Pogson, A History, p. 5. 15 Ibid. 16 See Pogson, A History, pp. 5–8.
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he decided to offer himself in sacrifice to her. When he was about to kill himself and with his sword had already inflicted an injury on himself, Vindhyavàsinì Devì revealed herself in her full glory to him. Paµcama’s complete devotion to her had induced her to prevent him from offering himself in sacrifice to her. To the drop of blood that from his wound had fallen to the ground she added a portion of am‰ta, “nectar”, by which the blood was animated and assumed the shape of a child which was the very image of Paµcama. At the sight of the child she was filled with maternal love for it and suckled it. Then she blessed Paµcama and the child, and in remembrance of the drop (buµda) of blood she said, “Your descendants will be called Bundelas”. And after assuring Paµcama of her favour and support, as also of success in all his enterprises, she gave him permission to leave. Accordingly Paµcama defeated his brothers, retook his properties and ruled righteously over them. The name Paµcama, “The fifth”, seems to provide a clue to the explanation of this legend. As may be known, the number 5 can stand for the totality implied in the number 4 as a symbol of the four points of the compass.17 From this viewpoint Paµcama’s four brothers seem to represent the four points of the compass of the Gaharavàra kingdom, and Paµcama himself, the favourite son of his father and made by him his heir, seems to embody the totality of Gaharavàra kingship. Thus Paµcama takes a unique position which makes him vulnerable, on the one hand, and enables him to transcend the status quo of Gaharavàra kingship, on the other. Paµcama is vulnerable because of the unusual fact that he, though being the youngest son, is made by his father his heir. It is true that this occurs more often but it is to be considered a deviation of the general rule.18 Paµcama’s heirship has the effect that on his father’s death his four brothers do not recognize him and dispossess him of his properties. The other side of the picture is his ability to transcend the status quo of Gaharavàra kingship. As a result, with the aid of
17 For the function of the number 5 as a symbol of totality in the Veda and the Mahàbhàrata, see respectively F.B.J. Kuiper, “The Three Strides of Viß»u”, in E. Bender (ed.), Indological Studies in Honor of W. Norman Brown (American Oriental Studies, 47 (1962)) p. 148; and G.J. Held, The Mahàbhàrata. An Ethnological Study (Amsterdam, 1935), p. 120. 18 See P.V. Kane, History of Dharma≤àstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law) (Poona 1946), Part 3, pp. 41–4.
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Vindhyavàsinì Devì, he reconquers his kingdom and—as is the core of the legend!—inaugurates the new era of the Bundela dynasty. The legend links up the Bundelas represented as descendants of the Gaharavàras with their new territory and expresses this in terms of the intervention of Vindhyavàsinì Devì, the feminine divine principle residing in the Vindhya. According to the version of the legend found in the Chatraprakà≤a the intervention of the goddess was only achieved by Paµcama’s willingness to offer his life in sacrifice to her. But other versions have it that he had to win her favour by human sacrifices. The version of the Chatraprakà≤a, therefore, seems to be based on a mitigated representation of the originally violent character of the cult of Vindhyavàsinì Devì. Significant of this is the fact that about the beginning of the twentieth century the Bundela court at O‰chà itself still rejected the version of the Chatraprakà≤a as a brahmanic or bardic fabrication.19 In the Chatraprakà≤a Gore Làla makes no scruple in combining the origin of the Bundelas as explained in the legend of Paµcama with their simultaneous descent from the king/god Ràma. But, as noted, Ke≤avadàsa disposes of the legend because of his view that the Bundelas are lineal descendants of Ràma. This marked difference between Gore Làla and Ke≤avadàsa may be accounted for by the fact that, in contrast to Gore Làla, Ke≤avadàsa expressly includes the territory of the Bundelas in his view of their lineal descent from Ràma. In this connection it is well to remember that Gore Làla does not adopt the tradition of the Vàlmìki-Ràmàya»a that Ku≤a transferred the seat of his reign from Ayodhyà to Ku≤avati, but that Ke≤avadàsa uses this tradition to demonstrate that Ràma’s own son laid the foundation for Bundela kingship in Bundelkhand. According to Ke≤avadàsa the Bundelas derive their right to their territory to their descent from Ràma’s son Ku≤a. Consequently, Ke≤avadàsa’s conception of their kingship offers no scope for Vindhyavàsinì Devì as their territorial divine protectress. On the other hand, Ke≤avadàsa cannot entirely disregard Vindhyavàsinì Devì on account of her old-established and deep-rooted cult. This appears from the sequel to his Bundela genealogy in the Vìracaritra. Here he puts the description of king Bìrasiµha’s heroic acts into the
19
See Luard, Orchha State Gazetteer, p. 12.
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mouth of Vindhyavàsinì Devì designated as the clan deity of the Bundelas.20 According to a current procedure he thus reduces the from old predominant position of the clan deity of the Bundelas to the subordinate role of narrating their history.
6 The foregoing raises the question as to the historicity of the descent of the Bundelas from the Gaharavàras as claimed by both Ke≤avadàsa and Gore Làla. Here it should be established at the outset that neither Bìrabhadra nor his son Bìra described by Ke≤avadàsa in the Vìracaritra are known from the history of the Gaharavàras. Since Paµcama referred to by Gore Làla in the Chatraprakà≤a is the subject of a legend, he, too, cannot be identified with a historical Gaharavàra. But it is a striking fact that Gore Làla represents Bìrabhadra as the last but one descendant of Ràma’s son Ku≤a who as Gaharavàra king still reigned at Benares. From history it is known that the last Gaharavàra king of Benares was Jayacandra who is much praised in bardic literature. In 1194 he was defeated and killed by sultan Muhammad Ghûrì at Candràvara near the Yamunà, in the Etawah District.21 This meant the fall of the Gaharavàra dynasty. However, from the time after Jayacandra’s death two inscriptions of the Gaharavàras are known.22 Both inscriptions date from 1197. The first inscription mentions Hari≤candra, the son of Jayacandra, as donor and has been found in Machalì≤ahara, in the Jawnpur District. The second inscription has been discovered in Belkhara, 12 miles to the southeast of Cunàra, in the Mirzapur District. Although in the second inscription the donor is not mentioned by name, he is supposed to be identical with the donor of the first inscription. From the geographic position of the places where the inscriptions have been found, it may be inferred that Hari≤candra, the son of Jayacandra, even after the fall of the Gaharavàra
20
See Vìracaritra III, 5. See P. Spear, The Oxford History of India by the Late Vincent A. Smith (Oxford 1958), p. 210. But according to Ray the battle at Candràvara already took place in 1193 (Ray, The Dynastic History, 1, p. 542). 22 See Ray, The Dynastic History, 1, pp. 544–7. 21
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dynasty still exercised some power in the more inaccessible parts of the former Gaharavàra kingdom. In connection with the subject in question it is noteworthy that the Mirzapur District where Belkhara, the finding place of the second inscription, is situated belongs to the region of Bundelkhand. The question, therefore, arises as to how far the tradition of the Bundela genealogies that the Bundelas are descended from the Gaharavàras, may be connected with the historical development outlined above. In the present state of knowledge it seems to be impossible to answer this question. About Jayacandra’s son Hari≤candra no more details seem to be known. But according to tradition he stands for the re-establishment of a destroyed illustrious dynasty. There exist different traditions about him. Characteristic of these traditions is that they do not designate him by his actual name but by a fictitious name. To the subject concerned it is interesting to consider the tradition of the Rà†hora Rajputs at Jodhpur, in Rajasthan. The Rà†hora Rajputs claim to be descended from the Gaharavàra king Jayacandra, and their bards designate Jayacandra’s son by his fictitious names of Sità-Ràma, •veta-Ràma or Seta-Ràma.23 That means that this tradition links up Jayacandra’s son with the Ràmacult. The tradition of the Bundela genealogies that the Bundelas are descended from the Gaharavàras seems to be comparable to that of the Rà†hora Rajputs. But in contrast to the tradition of the Rà†hora Rajputs, the Bundela genealogies do not mention the historical king Jayacandra but a king Bìrabhadra who is unknown from the history of the Gaharavàras. This weak spot in the Bundela genealogies is for the time being unaccountable. An important point of resemblance between the Bundela genealogies and the tradition of the Rà†hora Rajputs is that they do not only legitimate their respective dynasties by tracing them back to the same illustrious dynasty but also by setting them in the perspective of Ràma-bhakti. This shows that the way in which the Bundela genealogies legitimate kingship is not an isolated case but more a general phenomenon.
23
See A. Cunningham, Report of Tours in the Gangetic Provinces from Badaon to Bihar in 1875–76 and 1877–78, Archaeological Survey of India, 11 (1880), p. 129.
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7
In his legitimation of Bundela kingship Ke≤avadàsa does not confine himself to tracing the Bundelas via the Gaharavàras back to the king/god Ràma. Significant of this is that in the Kavipriyà he follows up the Bundela genealogy by a genealogy of his own family, the Sanà∂hya brahmans. The first four stanzas of the latter genealogy (II, 1–4) run as follows: From the mind of the venerable Brahmà Sanaka and his other [three] sons were born. From their mind in the beginning all Sanà∂hyas were born. Then Para≤uràma, the son of Bh‰gu, washed their feet [as a token of worship] and, considering them excellent brahmans, bestowed 72 villages on them. The Purificator of the world and Lord of the Vaikuµ†ha-heaven, called Ràmacandra, presented them with 700 villages in the Mathurà District. In the Kali-yuga [K‰ß»a], the supreme ornament to the Yadu clan of the lunar race of kings and Lord of the three worlds and men, gave them exactly the same beautiful villages back.
With an allusion to the name Sanà∂hya of his family Ke≤avadàsa traces his ancestors via Sanaka and Brahmà’s other three mind-born sons back to Brahmà himself. In the second stanza he states that Para≤uràma, “Ràma with the axe”, Viß»u’s sixth incarnation in the Tretà-yuga and known as a champion of the brahmans, considered the Sanà∂hyas to be excellent brahmans and, therefore, bestowed 72 villages on them. According to the third stanza in the same yuga Ràma presented them with 700 villages in the Mathurà District. The last statement is of particular importance since thereby Ke≤avadàsa localizes the Sanà∂hyas at the time of the Tretà-yuga, the second age of the world, in the very region that in the following Dvàpara-yuga will become K‰ß»a’s Holy Land. It is a little difficult to interprete the fourth stanza. But the purport of the stanza seems to be that K‰ß»a himself legitimated the landed property in his Holy Land which the Sanà∂hyas had received from Ràma, with the result that in the Kali-yuga, too, they would have a right to it. In the above passage Ke≤avadàsa with a grip embracing all yugas outlines the place of the Sanà∂hyas according to divine guidance. He does so by bringing Ràma and K‰ß»a into connection, in the sense that in the Dvàpara-yuga K‰ß»a in the Mathurà District re-
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established the kingdom of heaven which in the previous Tretà-yuga had been founded by Ràma in Avadha. In this connection it is well to remember the above-mentioned structural difference existing between the king/god Ràma and the pastoral deity K‰ß»a. This difference implies one between the character of their rules. Since Ràma as king belongs to the established society and has the responsibility of restoring and maintaining the dharma, the moral order of society, in spite of his divinity his rule remains bound to the world. On the other hand, K‰ß»a as cowherd is outside of the established society and by nature exceeds the dharma, with the result that his rule bears a transcendent character. In Ke≤avadàsa’s view the Bundelas are descended from the king/god Ràma and, following the steps of Ràma’s son Ku≤a, continue Ràma’s kingship in Bundelkhand. But since Ràma’s kingship itself is bound to the world, this cannot fully legitimate Bundela kingship. On the other hand, in the above passage Ke≤avadàsa expresses the idea that in the Tretà-yuga the king/god Ràma had meant the Sanà∂hya brahmans to clear the way for the transcendent rule to be established by the pastoral deity K‰ß»a in the Mathurà District in the next Dvàpara-yuga, and that K‰ß»a sanctioned their participation in it. That means that the Sanà∂hyas as brahmans derive their spiritual authority from K‰ß»a. Thus they, and with them Ke≤avadàsa himself, are ultimately able to legitimate Bundela kingship which itself is bound to the world. This conception can only be effective for Bundela kingship since K‰ß»a on account of the very fact that he as a pastoral deity bears a transcendent character, at the same time is the divine mediator par excellence who in the part of lover is nearest to man.24 As noted, K‰ß»a lends spiritual authority to the Sanà∂hya brahmans as participants in his transcendent rule. In his capacity of divine mediator he is equally in a position to connect the spiritual authority of the Sanà∂hya brahmans with the temporal power of the Bundelas. This raises the question as to how the divine mediator may be induced to do so. In his formalized K‰ß»a-lyrics Ke≤avadàsa seeks to solve this problem for the benefit of Bundela kingship. This may be illustrated by his second treatise on poetry, the Rasikapriyà, “Beloved
24
For K‰ß»a as the divine mediator see Held, The Mahàbhàrata, p. 175.
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of the connoisseurs of literary moods” (1591), wherein he systematizes Braj K‰ß»a-lyrics according to the Sanskrit theory of literary moods (rasa-≤àstra). In the introduction to this work (I, 14) he states that he aims at composing such a feeling poetry that it can bring the mind of the clever K‰ß»a under control.25 Ke≤avadàsa’s conception of Bundela kingship furnishes an instructive example of how at the end of the sixteenth century and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, in an Indian state a balance between temporal and spiritual authority was sought on the basis of a synthesis of two structurally different but simultaneously complementary forms of religious worship. This threw a new light on the old precarious relationship between king and brahman. In Ke≤avadàsa’s view the king stands for the king/god Ràma, while the brahman participates in the transcendent rule of pastoral deity and divine mediator K‰ß»a, thus granting ultimate authority to the king.
25 For a more detailed discussion of this subject, see G.H. Schokker, “The Control of the Uncontrollable”, in M.K. Gautam and G.H. Schokker (eds.), Bhakti in Current Research 1982–1985 (Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Delhi, 2001), pp. 135–43.
THE SHORT CAREER OF WALTER DICKENS IN INDIA1 Dick Kooiman
“The East is a career”. That saying could often be heard in nineteenth-century England. “The East” meant the Asian colonies, and foremost among them British India. In utter disregard of its huge population, long history and rich culture, the saying reduced India to a field of opportunity for enterprising British who wanted to make a career in colonial administration, military service or business life. Hidden behind that saying, however, still lay another possibility: all those who proved unable to make a decent living at home or had even become socially undesirable could as a last resort always escape to India or another colony to try their luck. The career-maker as well as the fortune-hunter are types we frequently come across when studying Charles Dickens, both in his fiction and in his family life. Already in an early work such as the Pickwick Papers, the colonies turn out to offer a welcome alternative to those seeking the success that had eluded them at home. The medical students Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen happen to pass their examinations, thanks to a temporary blindness of their teachers, but to the great relief of their patients their practice in Bristol goes bankrupt. Thereupon the two friends leave for Bengal, “both gentlemen having received surgical appointments from the East India Company”. In the final chapters of David Copperfield, fallen women like Emily and Martha get the opportunity to start a new life in the colonies, at the same time purifying England of their shame. The best-known example of adventurers leaving for Australia undoubtedly is Mr. Micawber from the same book. After England has failed to provide him with an employment opportunity that offers sufficient scope to all his manifold talents, he and his family embark for Australia in the firm conviction that something will turn up over there. Dickens was not only looking to the colonies as a solution for difficult cases in his fiction, he also used them for private problems 1
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Dickensian, 98 (2002), pp. 14–29.
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in his own family life. The sons of Dickens were, with one exception, not very successful in their social careers. At their baptisms they received impressive names, but in later life they generally proved unable to live up to the expectations thus raised. They tried all kinds of jobs and occupations, but most of them without success, and to the great dismay of their father they were constantly plagued by debt. Another remarkable fact is that Asia, and especially India, played a large part in the Dickens family. Dickens’s sixth son, Harry (Henry Fielding), was the sole exception to the family rule. He was clever and energetic, and made the best of both assets. His father intended him to join the Indian Civil Service, the prestigious colonial “steelframe”, but Henry preferred a career as a lawyer and proved rather successful in that profession. One of the sons that did go to India was Frank (Francis Jeffrey). After several attempts in business, publishing and even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had failed, he finally joined the Bengal Mounted Police. After his father’s death, he returned to England, but to the great relief of his embarrassed family soon left again, this time to join the Canadian Mounties. Alfred (d’Orsay Tennyson) and the youngest son Plorn (Edward Bulwer Lytton) also were not very fortunate in their pursuits in England and successively set sail for Australia, where they led a rather inconspicuous existence. Dickens’s second son, Walter Landor, left for India as a military cadet in 1857. There his eldest brother Charles (Culliford Boz) came to visit him a few years later. Charles was travelling through Asia to buy a large amount of tea, but he failed miserably as an importer. Sydney (Smith Haldimand), maybe the most reckless spender of all the Dickens children, chose the navy as the scene of his failure and died young.2 In this contribution to the volume our main attention will be focused on Walter Dickens. Contrary to Sol Gills’ nephew (Dombey and Son), this Walter was never to return home. After a brief military career he died in Calcutta in 1863. What I want to discuss here is the connection between Charles Dickens and India as manifested in the short life of Walter. Unfortunately, there is not much information available on the Indian experiences of this son of Dickens. 2 Information about Dickens’ sons in Edgar Johnson (ed.), Letters from Charles Dickens to Angela Burdett-Coutts: 1841–1865 (London, 1953), pp. 16, 378; Idem, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (London, 1977), pp. 522, 559, and Martin Fido, Charles Dickens: An authentic account of his life and times (London, no date), pp. 95–9.
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His letters from India have not been preserved. In his own correspondence, however, Dickens often referred to Walter’s preparations for India and his military adventures in the East. Also, the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library in London, the place where I first met Dirk Kolff many years ago, hold some precious papers that document part of Walter’s life as servant of the East India Company. Aided by this scanty source material I will try to give an outline of Walter’s Indian career. It is absolutely impossible to discuss the link between India and the Dickens family without mentioning the name of Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts. In her personal descent Miss Burdett-Coutts combined the dignity of an old family with the wealth of rich bankers. As heir to an immense fortune and with connections in the highest circles she was an eagerly sought-after marriage-partner. In spite of that, she was not to marry before old age. The major part of her active life was devoted to social and philanthropic work, like the improvement of sanitary arrangements in slum areas and the rehabilitation of prostitutes. In these endeavours Charles Dickens became her most determined supporter and assistant. She had made his acquaintance shortly after his rise to fame and they were to become trusted friends and regular correspondents. According to Fido, she was “the only woman whom Dickens treated with respect as an intellectual equal, without romantic idealisation”.3 More than 500 letters from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts have been preserved and a large part of them have been published in a volume by Edgar Johnson. As she was also actively interested in the education of the children of the Dickens family, he regularly reported to her their progress and achievements at school. For any research on Walter and his Indian adventures these letters represent a valuable source of information. The link between Miss Burdett-Coutts and India was established by the East India Company (EIC). In the first part of the nineteenth century, this commercial organization was extending its power over the Indian subcontinent by pursuing a vigorous policy of territorial annexation. The EIC was a multinational enterprise with large administrative powers, only remotely controlled by the British Parliament. Together with the Bank of England the EIC formed the financial 3 Quoted in Fido, Charles Dickens, p. 76. A brief summary of Miss Angela BurdettCoutts’ life can be found in the introduction to Johnson, Letters.
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foundation under the City of London. From the registers of this EIC one may conclude that Miss Burdett-Coutts was a large shareholder. In the 1850s—and most probably much earlier—she held more than £ 3000 in Company shares, which entitled her to a double vote in the meeting of shareholders. Apart from that, it qualified her for the position of a Director, although that was not a very obvious choice at that time. She was however, well-acquainted with several officiating Company Directors and could use these influential connections to confer appointments on people she personally preferred. On her request, John Loch, one of the Directors of the EIC, used his right of patronage to grant Walter, “the son of Mr. Charles Dickens the author”, a direct appointment as cadet for Bengal (1856).4 That did not mean that Walter was exempted from the necessary entrance examination. Walter had been born on 8 February 1841, when the Dickens family was still living at Devonshire Terrace. He was named after Dickens’s friend Walter Savage Landor at Bath, where Dickens had stayed some time the year before.5 His father described him as not so quick or sensitive and with no uncommon abilities, but “a hardworking, patient capable child”, who will always do his duty with great punctuality and a high sense of responsibility. When Walter was only eight years old, Dickens was already pondering the question of the future for which he had to prepare this son. It was Miss Burdett-Coutts who suggested for him a military career in India and Dickens responded eagerly. He gave her as his opinion that Walter was better fitted for life in India than his brother Charles and in any case much more safely to be left to himself. In conclusion he assured her: “I feel certain he would strive on and do well in India”.6 Like Charles, Walter attended King’s Private School in St. John’s Wood, where King’s own daughter taught classical languages as a
4 Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), L/MIL/9/241, “Letter from John Loch to John Hollyer, Clerk for Passing Cadets and Assistant-Surgeons, East India House, 6 March 1856”, f. 495. 5 “Letter from Charles Dickens to his wife Catherine, Bath, 1 March 1840”, in Walter Dexter (ed.), Mr. & Mrs. Charles Dickens: His letters to her (London, 1935), pp. 89ff. See also J.W.T. Ley, “Dickens and Walter Savage Landor: A Much Esteemd Friend”, The Dickensian 12 (1916), pp. 145–54. 6 “Letters from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Devonshire Terrace, 7 December 1849; and Folkestone, 18 June 1854”, in Johnson, Letters, pp. 156, 266. For a sketch of Walter’s character, ibidem, p. 16.
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more pleasant version of Miss Cornelia Blimber (Dombey and Son).7 At first, Addiscombe Military College was considered as the most suitable place for Walter to prepare for India. As it seemed unlikely that Walter would attain high distinction at this college, he was finally sent to Wimbledon School (1855), founded and managed by Rev. John M. Brackenbury (Cambridge) and Rev. Charles J. Wynne (Oxford).8 This establishment trained boys for the British Army artillery and engineers, but also for Indian cadetships. It is difficult to give any comment on the educational level of this school. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that when Walter visited his father in France in January 1856, he was deaf to such an extent that Dickens immediately sent him to an aurist. That specialist expressed his surprise that Walter’s reduced hearing had not brought itself to the attention of his schoolmasters in artillery and fortifications. The treatment gave considerable improvement, but his hearing remained delicate.9 Walter did very well at school. In the summer of 1856 Dickens informed his friend Walter Savage Landor that his namesake had brought home a prize in triumph and would be eligible to go up for his India examination soon after next Easter. Dickens continued: Having a direct appointment, he will probably be sent out after he has passed, and so will fall into that strange life “up the country”, before he well knows he is alive, which indeed seems to be rather an advanced stage of knowledge.10
Dickens kindly declined the financial support, offered by Miss BurdettCoutts for Walter’s preparations for India, but was tenderly touched by her generous gesture. He answered in reply that Walter would be ready for his examination in March 1857, and that it would be
7
Fido, Charles Dickens, p. 95. “Letters from Dickens to Miss Burdett Coutts, Devonshire Terrace, 10 January 1850; Broadstairs Kent, 22 August 1851; and Folkestone, 18 June 1854”, in Johnson, Letters, pp. 159, 186, 266. See also Johnson, Charles Dickens, p. 445. 9 “Letter from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Paris, 10 January 1856”, in Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson (eds.), The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 8: 1856–1858 (Oxford, 1995), p. 17. Dickens had earlier mentioned Walter’s defective sense of hearing in a letter to his wife Catherine (Tavistock House, 16 December 1855), in Dexter, Mr. & Mrs. Charles Dickens, p. 239. 10 “Letter from Dickens to Walter Savage Landor, Boulogne, 5 July 1856”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 152. 8
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far better for his health, certainly for his spirits, and no less for his duties to leave immediately after. The staying with his brothers and sisters with that unsettled purpose on him and cloud of departure hanging over him, would do him no good . . .11
At the close of the year 1856 Dickens addressed a letter to W.J. Eastwick who—probably at the request of Miss Burdett-Coutts—had done something, or had at least offered to do something, in Walter’s favour. Mr. Eastwick had left for India as a cadet in 1827 but now, almost thirty years later, he had become one of the EIC Directors. Dickens expressed his appreciation for the “kindest of letters” received from Mr. Eastwick and called it “his good fortune to receive many of the greatest spontaneous rewards that can attend an author’s life”. At the same time, he made use of this opportunity to recommend to the EIC’s attention another son as a prospective cadet for India, viz. Alfred, whom he said to have always purposed to send abroad, and whom he believed to be particularly qualified for an Indian career.12 In the meantime, the examination of Walter was drawing near and the necessary preparations had to be made. Forms had to be completed that could be collected at the East India House, the EIC headquarters. It was situated at Leadenhall Street, just round the corner of the offices of Dombey and Son. In 1862 this East India House was demolished and replaced by a new building in Petticoat Lane, close to the original site. Dickens greatly resented visiting a large and bustling office like the East India House, “teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones, . . . palmtrees, palanquins, and georgeous princes of a brown complexion . . .” (Dombey and Son), and asked his right-hand in journalistic affairs, William H. Wills, to fetch the forms for him. “I get so mobbed if I go to a place of that sort myself ”, Dickens wrote in explanation on 9 February 1857,13 11 “Letters from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, summer 1856”, quotation from “Letter Tavistock House, 3 October 1856”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 198. 12 “Letter from Dickens to William J. Eastwick, Tavistock House, 21 December 1856”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 241. In 1858 Eastwick was to become Member of the newly-founded Council of India. He was the author of Lord Lytton and the Afghan War (1879). 13 “Letter from Dickens to W.H. Wills, Tavistock House, 9 February 1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 279.
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most probably imagining the threatening spectre of another “Circumlocution Office”. On February 14th Dickens completed and signed the parents’ certificate on the printed form. Thereupon he forwarded the papers to Miss Burdett-Coutts as she was the one who had recommended Walter for nomination to the EIC. These application forms with enclosures are part of the “Cadet Papers” series that are preserved at the Oriental and India Office Collections in London.14 Although these papers are in a very bad condition by now, I got permission—after some gentle pressure—to peruse them, and like gold leaves they were scrupulously spread out before me in the Special Reading Room of the India Office. As a long-time admirer of Charles Dickens I felt a thrill of sensation to see before me the papers that so long ago Dickens and his son had completed with their own hand. On the first page Walter signed “the humble petition”, showing that he was desirous of entering the military service of the Company and promising that, should he be so fortunate as to appear eligible for such appointment, he would conduct himself with fidelity and honour. Next came the Director’s nomination which said: I, John Loch, Esq., being one of the Directors of the East India Company, beg leave to present the Petitioner Walter Landor Dickens as a Cadet for the Bengal Infy on one of my nominations of the Season provided he shall appear to you eligible for that station; and I do declare, that from the character given of him by Miss Burdett Coutts who certifies that he is well acquainted with his family, character and connexions, he is, in my opinion, a fit person to petition the East India Company for the appointment he now herein solicits.15
The remaining part of the first and the second page contained printed questions that Walter had to answer himself. They referred to his education and travelling insurance, and asked him to guarantee that his appointment was obtained by proper means. After the question “What is the profession, situation, and residence of your Parents or nearest of Kin”, Walter simply filled in: “My father Charles Dickens
14 OIOC, L/MIL/9/241, “Applications for East India Company Cadetships”, ff. 493–8. 15 The underlined names have been entered on the printed form in handwriting. The space behind “the Season” remained empty. The form does not seem to have made allowance for women as recommending persons, as it gave only “he”.
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Esq., Tavistock House”. On the third and last page Miss BurdettCoutts certified that she had received Walter’s nomination as a cadet for Bengal “gratuitously and expressly”, being well acquainted with his family. At the backside of the last page Dickens testified that Walter was his son and that the appointment of Walter was received through the gratuitous solicitation of Miss Burdett-Coutts without any payment being made. “Witness my hand, 14–2–1857”. The application papers contain some enclosures. An extract from the Register Book of Baptisms of the Parish of Saint Marylebone states that Walter was born on 8 February 1841 as son of Charles J.H. Dickens and Catherine Thomson. This rendering of his mother’s name would cling tenaciously to all later EIC documents relating to Walter. Also, on 23 March 1857 a medical certificate was added to the file and a testimonial by John Brackenbury of the Wimbledon School, stating that Walter had been instructed in the knowledge of his religious duties. In this way all requirements for an application had been met, yet Walter still had to “go up” for his India examination. That took place on 7 April 1857 and he passed successfully. To Walter’s Cadet Papers a certificate of the EIC Military College was added saying that he was examined and found qualified for admission into the East India Company’s service. The certificate was signed by three Professors who were specialists in Mathematics and Classics, Fortification and French.16 A few days later Dickens wrote a letter to Miss Burdett-Coutts telling her that Walter had returned home “radiant and gleaming”. He had passed his examination in a most creditable manner and was one of a small number of boys out of a large number who had “emerged from the Ordeal triumphant”. Dickens added that Walter was anxious “that I should ‘tell Miss Coutts that he hadn’t been spun’—which means rejected”.17 Thereupon, a period of hectic activity began for Walter. During the few months that rested before his departure his father arranged for his learning to swim, to ride, to fence, and to become acquainted with the use of gun and pistol, a skill that seems to have been 16 OIOC, L/MIL/9/241, “Walter Dickens’ Examination Certificate of the Company’s Military College, 7 April 1856”, f. 497. 17 “Letter from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Gravesend, 9 April 1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 311.
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neglected at the Wimbledon Artillery School. Dickens also wanted him “to go in for a trifle of Hindustanee” and for that purpose he sent his son to Charles P.H. Rieu, a specialist in oriental languages from Geneva, who worked in the British Museum Department of Manuscripts and was appointed at the University College London the same year. Invitations to Walter from Mr. Beadnell (the father of Maria, the love of Dickens’ youth) for a stay in Surrey, and from Miss Burdett-Coutts for a photograph visit were kindly declined. Walter was too much occupied with his preparations and his father thought it better that he had a few quiet hours with his brothers who had just come home from Boulogne after a year’s absence.18 On 20 July Walter set sail for India aboard the Indus, a ship of the well-known “Peninsular & Oriental Line”. Dickens, along with his eldest son Charles but without his wife Catherine, went to Southampton to bid him farewell. The taking leave was far from easy, both at Gad’s Hill where the family now resided and aboard ship, but Walter recovered directly and his father restrained his pride. He wrote to a friend: I left the poor fellow on board the Indus yesterday, in good spirits— as little cast down as, at 16, one could reasonably hope to be with the world of India before one.19
On board Walter immediately found an old schoolfellow and Dickens had a talk with the captain who assured him that Walter should have every possible protection and assistance. A few years later Dickens was to describe a visit to a departing ship of emigrants, published in The Uncommercial Traveller (XX), which bears a strong resemblance to Walter’s departure, the conversation with the captain included. When Dickens and his son took leave, they seem to have been unaware of the violent uprising that was changing India into a battle field. The annexation of large parts of the subcontinent and the heavy taxation imposed on the peasant population had produced
18 Correspondence summer 1857, especially “Letter to Mr George Beadnell, Gad’s Hill, 5 June 1857” and “Letter to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Tavistock House, 10 July 1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, pp. 341ff., 372ff. Also Johnson, Letters, p. 343. 19 “Letter from Dickens to John Deane, Gad’s Hill, 21 July 1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 382.
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wide-spread feelings of unrest. The EIC further contributed to that unrest by taking measures that the Indian population could only perceive as dangerous to its religion and culture. In the Company’s Army, the creation of which has been described in Dirk Kolff ’s Ph.D. thesis,20 tensions were also building up. Service conditions were bad and language problems frustrated the solidarity between British officers and the largely Indian rank and file. In these strained circumstances a new rifle was introduced the use of which required the biting of greased cartridges. The awkward question was: where did the fat come from? There were many brahmans and other high caste men serving the Bengal Army who shuddered at the thought that it might be beef fat, whereas pig fat, on the other hand, would mean insult to the Muslim soldiers. In that atmosphere of uncertainty, at the end of May 1857 a mutiny broke out which would spread over large parts of northern India and was to push Company rule to the verge of extinction It is uncertain whether Walter at his departure could have known what in India was waiting for him. The exchange of information between Europe and South Asia went by ship and it took about six weeks before any news from India had reached London. On 27 July—thus one week after Walter’s departure—the House of Commons was for the first time apprised of the Indian Mutiny by Disreali. Undoubtedly, there must have been earlier reports on developments in India in the British press. However, Dickens never showed any undue interest in India. Also, the information on Walter he passed on to others does not suggest that he realized how critical the situation was. Walter wrote letters from Gibraltar and Malta, but the only thing Dickens mentioned in his correspondence was that Walter “seems to have become habituated to his new life, with wonderful ease.”21 In the meantime the mutineers in India had laid siege to the town of Lucknow ( June 1857). At the end of the same month they captured another important town, Kanpur, and brutally murdered all European inhabitants, women and children included. These alarm-
20 D.H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput & Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 178ff. 21 “Letter from Dickens to W.J. Eastwick, Tavistock House, 19–8–1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, pp. 416–417. Walter travelled via Malta and the overland Suez-route.
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ing events found their echo in Dickens’s reference to “these distracted Indian times” in a letter dated 4 September.22 Walter had sent a third letter from Suez, but on 4 October his family had not yet received word from him from Calcutta. For that letter, they had to wait “untill the next Mail”. No wonder that from the autumn of 1857 Dickens was following the news on India in The Times with keen interest and shared in the general indignation about the slowness of reinforcements being sent to India. Dickens particularly criticized the system of purchasing commissions, which made it virtually impossible for sons of the middle class to move up in a colonial administration that was dominated by a small elite. He portrayed that elite in Little Dorrit as the great family of the Barnacles: wherever there was a square yard of ground in British occupation under sun or moon, with a public post upon it, sticking to that post was a Barnacle. No intrepid navigator could plant a flag-staff upon any spot of earth, . . ., but to that spot of earth, as soon as the discovery was known, the Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle and a despatch-box.
In an outburst of anger Dickens made known what he would do in case he were the commander-in-chief in India: The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement . . . should be to proclaim to them, in their language, that I considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested; and that I begged them to do me the favor to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.23
It is not often, as Peter Ackroyd has commented, that a great novelist recommends genocide.24 But Dickens was swept along in the general indignation raised by the news of English women and children being massacred by the mutineers. In that heated state of 22
“Letter from Dickens to Dr J. Sheridan Muspratt, Office Household Words, 4 September 1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 431. 23 “Letter from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Gad’s Hill, 4 October 1857”, in Johnson, Letters, p. 350 and House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 459. A similar letter, with slight variations in wording, was sent to Emile de la Rue (Office Household Words, 23 October 1857), in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 473. 24 Peter Ackroyd, Dickens (London, 1990), p. 799.
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mind he wrote a Christmas story for Household Words, in collaboration with Wilkie Collins, entitled “The Perils of Certain English Prisoners”, which brought out the horrors of the Mutiny and its main characters situated on a fictitious Caribbean island.25 Originally Walter had been gazetted in the 26th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry. When he arrived in Calcutta, on 30 August 1857, he found that the Regiment was disbanded due to the Mutiny. Thereupon he was assigned to H.M.s 42nd Highlanders, a unit of the British Army in India. He was by now, as Dickens recorded, “in the thick of the Indian tussle”. The Mutiny affected primarily the Bengal Presidency and the North of India, and it was in these parts that the most embittered battles were fought. With the utmost effort and the vital support of loyal Indian troops from other parts of the subcontinent the British were able to prevent the uprising from spreading to other areas. In September Delhi was recaptured and even before reinforcements had arrived the back of the Mutiny was broken. Walter’s corps, the 42nd Royal Highlanders, played an important part in this decisive turn. It fought in the battle of Kanpur (December 1857) and took part in the relief of Lucknow (March 1858). On both sides dreadful acts of violence were perpetrated, but as a matter of course the English press dwelled extensively on the cruelty and unreliability of the Indians. In another flash of temper Dickens blamed the colonial administration for knowing nothing of the Hindu character, and the “Asses in power” for believing that England, while doing nothing, was doing everything. He scorned English ladies for rushing after visiting Indian Princes, whereas they should know better. He warned them: You know faces, when they are not brown; you know common expressions when they are not under turbans; Look at the dogs—low treacherous, murderous, tigerous villains who despise you while you pay court to them, and who would rend you to pieces at half an hour’s notice.
Therefore, he entirely rejected the suggestion made in a proclamation by Lord Canning, Governor-General of India, that mercy should form the corner stone in the building of a new India: “[g]reater mistake was never committed in the world”.26
25 William Oddie, “Dickens and the Indian Mutiny”, in The Dickensian (68) 1972, pp. 3–17. 26 “Letter from Dickens to Emile de la Rue, Office Household Words, 23 October 1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 473.
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It is not known whether, and if so what, Walter reported on these developments back home. Anyhow, at complete variance with Dickens’s just quoted emotional outbursts, which might conceal a deep concern for the well-being of his son, is the information on Walter he passed on to others. In December 1857 he wrote that he did not know where precisely Walter was at the moment, but concluded with a sense of satisfaction: “He likes the country and the life, of all things, and is quite happy”.27 The following year, when the situation for the British had considerably improved, he encouraged the mother of another Indian cadet with the following words: My boy was invalided long ago, and carried in a litter God knows how far and how long. But he began to get well, the moment he arrived at a Hill-Station, and his only care now, in the letters he writes home, is to get away from that easy life and be on service again. He had sun-stroke, a passing-attack of small pox, and smart Fever. But he rallied, gaily—and so will your boy . . .28
Maybe, the cheerful tone of what we know of Walter’s letters should be explained by a light-heartedness of youth and the fact that the confusion during the Mutiny had enabled him to gain rapid promotion in the army. He had gone out as an Ensign, but already before the age of 18 he was made a Lieutenant in the thinned ranks of the Queen’s 42nd Highlanders; and he “got a lot of prize-money besides”.29 What certainly also must have contributed to his feeling of contentment was the military honours, a “Mutiny medal with clasp”, which he received for his part in the operations of H.M.s 42nd Royal Highlanders against Lucknow and in the field in the North-Western Provinces.30 In the years following the Mutiny Walter’s name was seldom mentioned in Dickens’s correspondence. Dickens tried his utmost to get his fourth son Alfred, in the footsteps of Walter, a place somewhere
27 “Letter from Dickens to Mrs Watson, Tavistock House, 7 December 1857”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 448. 28 “Letter from Dickens to Mrs Gore, Tavistock House, 7 September 1858”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 654. 29 OIOC, L/MIL/10/65, No. 696, “Bengal Army Service List (1857)”. Quotation from “Letter Dickens to W.W.F. de Cerjat, Tavistock House, 1 February 1859 and 3 May 1860”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 9, pp. 21, 247. 30 OIOC, L/MIL/5/75, “Vol. I: Mutiny Medal British Army Infantry”, p. 417”. Walter’s name was included in the original roll for Indian medals of October 1858, but for some unknown reason the medal reached him only several years later.
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in India. For that purpose he reminded Mr Eastwick of the latter’s offer (December 1856) to recommend Alfred for an appointment as EIC cadet. In the meantime, however, service conditions in India had drastically changed. After the Mutiny, the EIC was dissolved and the Directors’ monopoly on appointments was finally broken. The administration of India was transferred to a Secretary of State for India who, as a Government Minister, was responsible to the British Parliament. Eastwick, though a Member of the advisory Council of India, had lost his right of patronage in the field of appointments and Dickens, who had fought so long against the clanspirit of the Barnacles, had to appreciate that. Alfred, however, lacked the ability to succeed in the keen competition for entrance that superseded the purchase of commissions through influence and had to try his luck elsewhere.31 In the end, Walter’s career in India turned out to be tempestuous but short-lived. On 7 February 1864, on his own birthday, Dickens received the sad news that Walter had died in India. A few days later Dickens, shocked by the unexpected loss, reported the circumstances of Walter’s death to Miss Burdett-Coutts. He wrote her that Walter had always been in debt, the “poor boy”, and that he supposed the regiment to have been ill looked after by the Colonel. However, he had refused to render financial support as Walter, in justice to his other brothers, should live upon his own means. Thereupon Walter had written to his sister Mary, saying that he had made up his mind to write home no more, “until he was out of debt”. So nothing was heard of him for many months, till Mary got a short note from him in the autumn of 1863 to the effect that he was not well. About the turn of Christmas, Walter informed her that he had been very ill indeed and was now packing up to go to Calcutta, to be certified by a medical board there, and sent home on sick leave. He said he was so weak that he could hardly crawl, but otherwise was much better; and he was in joyful expectation of seeing Gad’s Hill again. He arrived at Calcutta from the station where his regiment was, on the 27th of December. He was consigned by the Regimental Doctor
31 “Letters from Dickens to Mr. W.J. Eastwick, Tavistock House, 26 April 1859; and Regents Park, 14 February 1861”, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 9, pp. 53, 386. Fido, Charles Dickens, p. 97.
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to the officers’ Hospital there, which is a very fine place. On the last day of the old year at a quarter past 5 in the afternoon he was talking to the other patients about his arrangements for coming home, when he became excited, coughed violently, had a great gush of blood from the mouth, and fell dead;—all this in a few seconds.32
Dickens confided to Miss Burdett-Coutts that he did not want to make the immediate cause of death widely known. The reason was that one of Walter’s aunts, Georgina, suffered from the same trouble33 and one of his brothers showed similar danger signs. He did not elaborate on the symptoms, but described the disease as an extensive and perfectly incurable aneurism of the Aorta, which had burst. He added that he—apparently concerned about Walter’s health— had sent his son Frank to India on December 20th. Frank looked forward to see his brother back after six years, but learned on arrival that Walter had died one month before.34 In the Ecclesiastical Returns of Bengal, preserved in the Oriental and India Office Collections, I found Walter’s name in the Register of the Military Burial Ground of Fort William. Among the many, generally young men entered into the register for these years, the name of Walter Landor Dickens is mentioned with the comment, added in another hand-writing, “second son of Charles Dickens, the writer”. Walter had died on 31 December 1863 and the cause of death was given as “Hamatoemisis”. He was buried on the first day of the New Year, the funeral service being conducted by chaplain J. Cave Browne. He was then 22 years of age.35 The loss came as a grievous blow to Dickens and the rest of the family. Walter was the first son to die. The loss was the more painful for Dickens as Walter, in the great style of his family, had left a considerable amount of debts. When Charles came to see his brother
32
“Letter from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Gloucester Place, 12 February 1864”, in Johnson, Letters, pp. 375–6. A virtually similar report in his letter to Mr. Charles Knight (Gloucester Place, 1 March 1864), in The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 2: 1857–1870, edited by his Sister-in-Law and his Eldest Daughter (London, 1880), pp. 212–3. 33 Ackroyd, Dickens, p. 943. 34 Letters from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts and Mr. Charles Knight, see note 32. According to the editors of The Letters of Charles Dickens, p. 208, Frank had left for India only at the end of January 1864. Frank would stay on in India for seven years as a member of the Bengal Mounted Police. 35 OIOC, N/1/107, “Ecclesiastical Returns, Bengal”, f. 128. The age in the burial register is incorrectly given as 24 years.
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in India, Walter was already absolutely penniless and Charles had to pay everything during the fortnight of their being together. A few months later Walter wrote home that his financial difficulties had led to his being placed low on the list for a Company. After Walter’s death Dickens received an urgent request from his regiment to settle a claim for debts in excess of a hundred and forty pounds. One bill might have amused the author in less depressing circumstances: Humble petition of Gunga Rum Cloth . . . Your poor petitioner is want 14 Re 8 ans. from April 1862 And he havnt paid to me yet and Sir I have heard now Dickens is gone to England some days ago And Sir now I will get these Re with your kind Should I be so fortunate as to succeed my request for which Act of generosity I shall ever pray for your long life and prosperity.36
Walter was buried at the cemetery of Fort William, Calcutta.37 Dickens himself sent out the inscription for the boy’s tomb to Brigade SurgeonMajor R.W. Carter, M.D., a Crimean and Mutiny officer, who arranged and placed in position the tombstone. In course of time, the original stone, embedded in a masonry platform, was practically concealed from view by rank grass and other vegetation. In 1907 Walter’s grave was rediscovered and its stone inscription deciphered by the kind efforts of Wilmot Corfield. The inscription ran as follows: In memory of Lieut. WALTER LANDOR DICKENS, The second son of CHARLES DICKENS, who died At the Officer’s Hospital, Calcutta, On his way home on sick leave, December 31st, 1863, Aged 23 years.38
Remarkable, apart from the fact that Walter seems to have had no mother, is the wrong statement about his age.
36
Quoted in Fido, Charles Dickens, p. 95. Alipore or Bhowanipore Cemetery are other names given for Walter’s last resting place. See on this question The Dickensian, 49 (1953), p. 100. 38 Wilmot Corfield, “Walter Savage Landor Dickens: Discovery of his Grave in India”, The Dickensian, 7 (1911), pp. 41–2; 227. 37
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We may conclude that Charles Dickens had a close personal connection with British India through the adventurous lives of some of his sons. That did not mean that Dickens was really interested in the Indian people and their culture. For him, India remained a land of tigers, heat and Rajahs smoking curled golden pipes of incredible length, as pictured with Jack Maldon’s departure as a cadet for India (David Copperfield). The existence of a British empire in Asia was in no way questioned by this otherwise outstanding social reformer who so sharply analysed and exposed to ridicule the evils of his own society. In Dombey and Son Major Bagstock is introduced as one who had served in Pune (British-India) and after retirement had brought home an Indian servant, known as “the Native”, whom he treated all day with barbarous contempt. But the idea never occurred to Dickens that old Joe Bagstock with his rough manners might personify British policies in the colonies at large. Indian students of Dickens never tire of reminding us that Dickens, so consistent in his championship of the underdog at home, envisaged with total equanimity the exploitation of millions of Asians abroad.39 The only imaginable, though rather weak excuse, put forward by Peter Ackroyd, is Dickens’s disgust at the way certain philanthropists attended to distant causes while ignoring those closer to home, like Mrs Jellyby (Bleak House). Nevertheless, from Dickens’s point of view, India was interesting primarily as an opportunity for his unfortunate progeny to make a better living than they could afford at home. For him also, the East was first of all a career.
39 Sajni Mukherji, “Telescopic Philanthropy: Attitudes to Charity and the Empire in Charles Dickens”, Economic and Political Weekly, 16 (1981), p. PE17.
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WRITING AND READING TOD’S RAJASTHAN: INTERPRETING THE TEXT AND ITS HISTORIOGRAPHY Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph We first encountered Col. James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan in Jaipur. The year was 1956. We had driven to India overland from London and were living in Bissau House as guests of the Thakur of Bissau, the late Raghubir Singh. The Ford Foundation had given us Foreign Area Training Grants to study, in the language of the time, “political development”. We wondered how India had become a liberal democracy and whether it could remain one. In his 1831 visit to America, the youthful Alexsis de Tocqueville had a similar question on his mind. His answer in Democracy in America featured associational life. Did India have an associational life? If it did, what was it like? In so poor, diverse and hierarchal a country, could India’s associational life sustain liberal democracy? Our answer in The Modernity of Tradition was that it could. We had come to Jaipur, the capital of the newly formed state of Rajasthan, because Ford Foundation officers and interviewers wanted to know how we were going to study so vast and complex a place as “India”. We invented an answer. We would study a state in the north and a state in the south, one from formerly British India and one from formerly Princely India. The result was that we spent six months in Rajasthan and six months in Madras (now Tamilnadu). Which brings us back to Tod. How could we start to know Rajasthan? Our academic, administrative and Rajput friends told us to start by reading Col. James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. The well marked hefty, khaki-bound two-volumes-in-one 1920 print of the 1914 Douglas Sladen edition shares pride of place in our bookshelves with the elegant wonderfully illustrated two volume first edition, the first volume published in 1829, the second in 1832. The Annals proved to be a daunting challenge, full of what at the time seemed to be arcane facts and esoteric knowledge. We have spent a good many years working on its meaning and import. What follows is in part what we learned from the text, in part, indeed a larger part, what we learned about the text and its career.
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.
Before turning to why the text was written the way it was and to its career, we want to introduce James Tod, the author, by characterizing his life, career and accomplishments. Next we turn to analyzing and explaining why and how he wrote The Annals and Antiquities the way he did. Our concluding section will examine how and with what consequences the Annals were read by the principal protagonists of the text, the Rajputs of Rajasthan, the warriors who ruled its ancient kingdoms; by officials, defenders and critics of the East India Company and its successor in 1858, the Government of India; and by Indian nationalists. The result should show how Tod’s Rajasthan shaped Rajput, imperial and nationalist identity and historiography. Like the story for Americans of the Puritans fleeing persecution and establishing a “city on the hill” in “the new world”, Tod’s story for Indians of valorous ancient Rajput kingdoms has become an origin myth.
Introducing Tod Tod has not found a place in Philip Woodruff ’s “The Founders”, the title of Volume 1 of Woodruff ’s [actually Philip Mason’s] influential two volume The Men Who Ruled India, a pantheon for East India officials who ruled India from Clive’s victory at Plassey in 1757 until the mutiny and rebellion one hundred years later in 1857. During his 23 years (1799–1822) of arduous service to the Company he surveyed and mapped western India, the India that stretched from Saurashtra in the far west to the Doab in central India; played a critical role in establishing British hegemony on the subcontinent by providing the intelligence needed for victory over the Marathas in 1817; contributed to the remarkable outburst of Orientalist learning associated with the Asiatic Society of Bengal by, inter alia, establishing the study of numismatics in India and, most remarkable of all, over a four year period in Mewar (Udaipur), gathering the materials and doing much of the research for The Annals. The seventeen year old James Tod arrived in Calcutta in 1799 to begin service in the Company’s Bengal Army. He had been appointed a cadet on the recommendation of his well-connected uncle, Patrick Heatley. Prior to his departure for Calcutta he had attended a short training course at the Royal Military Academy at
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Woolwich.1 Apart from his limited professional and technical training at Woolwich, little is known about his education prior to his departure for India. His education, including the likelihood that he was something of an autodidact, is a matter of some mystery. We are left to wonder about his education because of his subsequent command, in The Annals and Travels, of the literature of the Scottish enlightenment, ancient Greece and Rome and of his own time, the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. His family on both his father’s and his mother’s side were part of Scotland’s remarkable eighteenth century diaspora.2 His father, James Tod, married Mary Heatley in New York in 1779 but his son, also James, was born in Islington, near London, on 20 March 1782. Soon after his marriage, James senior, along with his brother John, left America for India where they became indigo planters at Mirzapur. By 1782 when young James was born, the brothers had left India. Although it seems young James grew up in England, little is known about his life as a child or where or how he was educated. Young James had a deep and distinguished Scottish lineage. The family of his maternal grandfather, Andrew Heatley, held a landed estate in Lanarkshire for four centuries. Andrew Heatley had immigrated to Newport, Rhode Island where he married Mary Grant, daughter of Suetonious Grant, a resident of Newport since 1725 when he had immigrated from Inverness, Scotland. Suetonious had sold the baronetcy he had inherited from his grandfather to his cousin, Alexander Grant, a successful London merchant who seems to have been the person who formally nominated young James to the EIC cadetship that his uncle, Patrick Heatley, is said to have arranged for him.3
1 For the early history of East India Company training institutions and their effect on knowledge about and perceptions of India, see B.S. Cohn, “Recruitment and Training of British Civil Servants in India, 1600–1860,” in Ralph Braibanti (ed.), Asian Bureaucratic Systems emergent from the Imperial Tradition (Durham NC, 1966). 2 The Scottish diaspora is extensively dealt with in Arthur Herman, How the Scots invented the Modern World (New York, 2001). See in particularly the six chapters of Part II: “Diaspora”. 3 Biographical information about James Tod has been gleaned from a variety of sources. Most useful for biographical information—and for framing and interpretative questions—has been Jason Freitag’s 2001 PhD dissertation in History at Columbia University (“The Power which raised them from Ruin and Oppression: James Tod,
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After his arrival in India, James Tod served the Company in central and western India in military, surveying, intelligence and political capacities as it contested with the Marathas to be the successor to Mughal hegemony on the subcontinent. When in 1818 the rulers of kingdoms in Rajputana signed treaties recognizing the suzerainty of the EIC, he became the Company’s first political agent at Mewar. For years and at great cost to his health he camped in tents in harsh climes to tirelessly map central and western India, also collecting and preserving Rajasthan bardic literature. In his last four years (1818–1822) he amassed the material and many of the ideas for his monumental work. Tod benefited greatly from access to what today is called the Saraswati Bhandar, the Maharana’s personal library. He was the first historian to examine and use the library. Much of the material he deposited with the Royal Asiatic Society after his return to England, including copies of fifteen Sanskrit, Hindi and Rajasthani manuscripts frequently referred to in Rajasthan, and other valuable historical materials such as ancient coins, copper-plate grants, genealogical charts, old documents and paintings, were given to him by Maharana Bhim Singh. Before the age of photography, his cousin, Captain Waugh who accompanied him on his tours, made the priceless sketches that, as copper plate prints, adorn the first edition of the Annals. Before being driven out of India at 41 by the Company resident to the Mughal court in Delhi, David Ochterlony, Tod had played an important part in mapping, conquering and, most important, culturally inscribing Indian space by daring and arduous feats of surveying, war, and intelligence. Forced to retire by Ochterlony’s intrigues and machinations and in any case suffering from ill-health, Tod returned to England in 1823.4 Most of the writing of Rajasthan was
Historiography and the Rajput Ideal”) I trust that a revised version of this dissertation will soon be available. It will put Tod scholarship on a new plane. Other sources for biographical information about Tod include his principal works: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (particularly William Crooke’s introduction to his London 1920 edition) and Travels in Western India (Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1971) whose anonymously authored “Memoir of the Author” provides something of a biography. See also G. Smith (ed.), the Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1960; 1912 edition by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee); and Henry Cousens, “The Late LieutenantColonel James Tod”, Archeaological Survey of India (1907–1908). 4 Tod left India in broken health and defeated. Twelve years as a surveyor often spent “in camp . . . subject to the inclemencies of all weather under canvas” contributed to “. . . the very bad state of my health” (R.H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India, Vol. II: 1800 to 1815 (Dehra Dun, 1950), p. 446). In 1822, at
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done in London (c. 1823–1831) where he served as the first Librarian of the recently founded Royal Asiatic Society. The first volume of the Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan was published in 1829, the second in 1832. Tod’s text took on new meaning and new life after Queen Victoria’s proclamation of direct rule in 1858 and even more so in 1877 when Disraeli had Victoria declared Queen Empress of India. With direct and imperial rule India’s rulers became pillars of support and legitimation. Tod’s celebration of their ancient pedigrees and feudal status and honor became grist for the mill of imperial ideology and symbolic representation. In the imperial era his Rajasthan was naturalized, treated as a foundational text, and given canonical standing. Tod served the East India Company in India for 23 years, from his arrival in Calcutta in 1799 until 1822, the year before his departure from Bombay. In retrospect his greatest accomplishment may have been the four years he devoted while carrying out his duties as the Company’s Political Agent in Mewar to mastering Mewar’s language,5 culture and history. Tod’s prodigious “field work” in Mewar
the age of 41, Tod had been forced to retire from East India Company service and to leave India for England as a result of conflicts with his administrative superior, Major-General David Ochterlony (1803, Resident at the Mughal emperor’s court; victorious commander in wars in Mysore and Nepal and against the Marathas, Gurkhas and Pindaris; 1818, Resident in Rajputana when he negotiated treaties with several Rajput states; Resident again in Delhi when Tod was agent in Mewar). Ochterloney’s views, policies and actions epitomized the kind of activist interventionism that led in time to the mutiny and rebellion of 1857. Tod, by contrast, anticipated the post-Mutiny policy of respecting the princes and relying on them as loyal feudatories of the Crown. Ochterlony was a colorful and forceful figure who played a major military and administrative role in extending Company power in northern India and Nepal and whose career and despatches helped to shape pre-1857 British perceptions of and attitudes toward India. Ochterlony, who lived like a Nawab with a retinue of wives and attendants, thought he knew Indian character, languages and manners better than Tod. Having negotiated the 1818 treaties, he found Tod’s objections to Company imposed financial burden on Rajput states unwarranted and insubordinate. Ochterlony’s detractors charged that he “constantly interfered in the internal affairs of princely states”, adding to the confusion. In 1825 Ochterlony chose to resign rather than suffer a “repudiation of his policy”. His “papers” give us a detailed account of the conflict between Ochterlony and Tod (N.K. Sinha and A.K. Das (eds.), Selections from the Ochterlony Papers 1818–25 in the National Archives of India (Calcutta, 1964)). In the post-Mutiny India of direct rule, Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, rather than Ochterlony’s despatches, shaped perceptions, ideology and historiography. 5 In a private communication Dr. Rima Hooja, a prodigious scholar of Indian and Rajasthani subjects, including a forthcoming study of James Tod, informs me
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was done in the face of formidable challenges to his role as Political Agent from his rival and superior in New Delhi, David Ochterlony; from Mewar’s court nobles who resented and resisted his effort to “restore” the Maharana’s authority and resources; and from Mewar’s tribal others, the Meos of the northern march and the Bhils of the southern, who resisted Mewar’s authority. It would have taken considerable discipline, energy and imagination to meet and master these arduous challenges in the ordinary course but even more while coping, as Tod did through out most of his career in India, with the debilitating effects of ill-health. Readying himself to be the author of the Annals did not exhaust his accomplishments. Like Lewis and Clark at about the same time who provided President Jefferson with geographical knowledge of the Louisiana Territory (reaching to the Pacific Ocean from west and north of the Mississippi River), Tod, as Richard Strachey wrote in 1810, was engaged in collecting geographical materials, relating chiefly to the countries between the Indus [in the northwest] and Bundelkhund, the Junna and the Nerbudda [in the east and south] . . . He was ever ready to communicate the information he acquired . . . which, at that important period, proved most useful: it was well appreciated by Government.6
Tod also willy-nilly created more or less in his person the first (British) intelligence service in India, a service that proved decisive in making the Company and, via the Company, Britain the victors in the contest with the Marathas to succeed the Mughals as the hegemonic power on the Indian subcontinent. In this sense, Tod played a pivotal role in the military and political history of India. Tod came to know the Marathas early on his career. In 1805, as a 24 year old junior officer, he was assigned to the escort of Graeme Mercer, a friend of his uncle, Patrick Heatley and the Company’s
on the basis of a letter in the “Hardwicke Papers” (Add 9868 of British Library Western Mss Collection) signed by Tod to Col. Colin McKenzie dated February 19, 1821, that Tod “extracted the Essence . . . of many works in prose and verse, in all dialects—From the ‘Deo Banee’ [the Sanskrit], so called by pre-eminence—the language of the Gods, to the uncouth Basha, the Doric of Medpat or the honied words of Brij. My tutor is an adept in every one. The Suruswutti—of which is the Punjabi,—the Magadi [Behar], Guzeratti &c &c, and I understand the Rangra and blunder thro’ all.” 6 Tod, Travels, p. xxiii.
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Envoy and Resident at the court of Daulat Rao Scindia, the Maratha chief.7 For the next eight years he remained with the escort. In 1813, the year before the onset of the Third Maratha War, Tod was promoted to Captain and put in charge of the escort. Throughout these years personally and with the aid of paid assistants he studied and surveyed the terrain, in time coining such geographic terms as “Rajasthan”, “Malwa”, and “Central India” and becoming increasingly familiar with the outlook and habits of leading Maratha personalities. In 1815, the map he sent the Governor-General, Lord Hastings, and his knowledge of the Maratha’s “order-of-battle” created crucial strategic advantages for the Company’s forces. Tod provided plans for military operations and supervised an intelligence department. The Maratha defeat in 1817 opened the way in 1818 to treaties of “subordinate cooperation” with several of the Rajput kingdoms. Tod, now 36, was appointed Political Agent to the Western Rajput States by the Governor-General.8 His momentous four years in Mewar had begun. Tod’s final accomplishment was as a scholar-administrator. He lived and worked at what he felt to be the periphery of the East India Company’s world in India. Although a member of the Asiatic Society located in distant Calcutta, the seat of the East India Company’s Governor-General and his administration, he was sufficiently awed by the scholar-administrator members resident there and sufficiently unsure of how to present and interpret the massive amount of material
7 The Marquis of Wellesley’s (Arthur Wellesley) victories in 1803 at Assaye over the Maratha Peshwa, Baji Rao II and over Daulat Rao Sindhia, in the so-called First Maratha War, led to the signing of the Treaty of Bassein. It gave the Company effective control over the Maratha homeland by means, inter alia, of a military escort being stationed at the Maratha’s moveable court. For summary treatment of the First Maratha War and, more generally, the Maratha era see Surjit Mansingh, Historical Dictionary of India (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 57; 250–2. For summary treatments of the First, Second and Third “Anglo-Maratha” Wars and short accounts of the Maratha chiefs involved in them (Balaji Baji Rao and Baji Rao II), see Parshotam Mehra, Dictionary of Modern Indian History, 1707–1947 (New Delhi, 1985), pp. 431–4; 62–6, For an excellent analytic account of the Maratha era, see Stewart Gordon, The Marathas: 1600–1815 (Cambridge, 1993). 8 Tod was put in charge of Mewar, Kotah, Bundi, Jaiselmer and Sirohi. Tod’s differences with David Ochterlony in Delhi and with other Company officials led in time to all these states, except Mewar, being withdrawn from his charge. When Jaiselmer was withdrawn in 1822 and he was dishonored by having his escort reduced, Tod resigned his post in Mewar in June and began his “travels in western India” prior to his departure for England from Bombay in February 1823.
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he had gathered that he refrained from submitting his work for publication in Asiatic Researches much less beginning a general work on Rajasthan.9 It was only after his return to England in 1823 and becoming the first Librarian of the newly formed Royal Asiatic Society in 1824 that he began to publish articles based on the extensive material he had gathered and on his views about India’s civilization. Among the first was an article in the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society on ancient coins. O.P. Kejariwal credits Tod as being “the first person to have taken a scholarly interest in ancient coins . . . His article . . . evoked wide interest. The dis-
9 Asiastic Researches, the journal of the Asiatic Society, was founded in January 1784, by Sir William Jones four months after his arrival in Calcutta. The journal had the encouragement and support of India’s first Governor-General, Warren Hastings (Robert Clive had preceded Hastings but as Governor-General of Bengal only). The first volume of Asiatic Researches was published in 1789. Four more volumes appeared over the ten years that William Jones served as President of Asiatic Society, each volume causing “a successively great sensation in Europe” ( John Keay, India Discovered; The Recovery of a Lost Civilizaton (London, 2001), p. 27). In his 1821 letters to Col. Colin MacKenzie Tod mentioned that he was not sending anything to the Asiatic Society “of which I am an unworthy member; but dreading a critique it has lain quiet since the day written two years ago,” and “my enquiries are unabated, but I have not a single essay on any one subject. . . . How or in what manner shall I attempt to reply to your letter? How enter the interminable field of Hindoo antiquity? Whither will it lead me? Where can I leave off ? It is plunging me into a labyrinth of my own: but I have provided no clue for my exit and I may be left in the darkness of my own ideas without enlightening you”. (British Library, Add Mss 9868, F. 133, “Letter of Tod to MacKenzie, Oudipoor 17 February 1821”, and Add Mss 9868, F. 114, as quoted in Freitag, “The Power which raised them from Ruin”, p. 43. Hastings was committed to Indian learning in part because he thought he should govern with the approbation (not the same as consent) of those he governed. He undertook measures to promote knowledge of the languages, texts and customs of the people of India starting with the languages of the text the scholar-administrators of the Asiatic Society were “discovering,” Persian and Sanskrit and extending to vernacular languages such as Bengali and Urdu. Hastings himself could speak Urdu, Bengali and commanded some Persian. Keay glosses the Hastings views this way: “If British rule in India was to prosper and last, British administrators must themselves become partly Indianized. They must learn the languages, study the customs. The government must work within existing institutions, not try to impose a whole new set of Western ones. There must be intellectual exchange, not a walkover; and if there were flagrant abuses in Indian society they must be reformed from within, not proscribed from without” (Keay, India Discovered, p. 23). Tod follows the Hastings view of British rule in India, a view diametrically opposed to that advanced by James Mill and others. Mill’s 1830 rule in India, a view diametrically opposed to that advanced by James Mill and other utilitarians. Mill’s 1832 parliamentary testimony in anticipation of the Charter renewal in 1834 (to be characterized further below) articulates the alternative view while Tod’s testimony builds on Warren Hastings’ perspective.
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covery of a large number of Roman and Bactrian coins in India made it obvious that a study of coins in India would contribute to the study of ancient Europe.”10 John Keay also describes Tod as “the person who launched Indian numismatics”.11 Apart from this pioneering numismatic work, Tod helped to launch the study of ancient Indian history. In 1822, during his “travels in western India,” he “discovered” and took copies of two short sections from what came to be called the Girnar Rock Edict,” the memorial,” as Tod put it at the time of his discovery, “of some great conqueror”. That great conqueror proved to be Ashoka. Tod could not read the script but after James Prinsep deciphered it Tod’s copies proved to be critical in establishing that Ashoka’s edicts spanned a subcontinental empire. In concluding our thoughts on James Tod, the person, we ask ourselves a question that has, after Edward Said’s influential book Orientalism,12 Michel Foucault’s various observations about the relationship of knowledge and power, and, for India particularly, Ronald Inden’s Imagining India,13 become de rigueur: why did Tod pursue knowledge, why did he map central and western India, why did he write Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan? How should we interpret and theorize his motives and text? However much Tod’s mapping and intelligence work contributed to the Company’s victory over the Marathas in 1817 and however much his work from 1818 to 1822 as Political Agent in Mewar contributed to the consolidation of British power on the Indian subcontinent, did he write Rajasthan, as the Edward Said of Orientalism would have us believe, because in colonial contexts knowledge necessarily serves power? As Foucault would have it, Tod was in the grip of power; willy-nilly he did what power required of him. One way or another, what he knows and why and how he knows is determined by his colonial location. We find such strong claims for structural determination excessive because they too radically discount agency and the related mentalities,
10 O.P. Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past (New Delhi, 1988). p. xx. 11 Keay, India Discovered, p. 87. 12 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979). Said modifies his view and softens the structural determinism found in Orientalism in Culture and Empire. 13 Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Cambridge Mass., 1990).
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tropes and epistemes, to be examined below, that shaped Tod’s thinking, choices and actions. One of the reasons Tod wrote Rajasthan in the first place and wrote it the way he did was his engagement with what might be called the original and authentic “Orientalists”, the persons associated with Sir William Jones and his protector, GovernorGeneral Warren Hastings. Did the stellar cast of scholar-administrators who populated the Asiatic Society14 and who created an amazing body of Indological knowledge pursue knowledge because they were pursuing power or because of their love of learning and intellectual curiosity? Must we choose one or the other? Our reading of James Tod and of the other Asiatic Society Orientalists gives considerable weight to love of learning and intellectual curiosity. As a teen-age undergraduate at Oxford William Jones mastered not only several European languages but also took up Arabic and Persian, languages in his view of two great civilizations. Years later, as he approached India by sea, he thought of those civilizations, one to the north and one to the south of the route his ship was taking. His trope was “civilization”. After he mastered Sanskrit in India he declared it and its literature at least the equal of Greek and its literature. Like Tod, Jones and his Asiatic Society colleagues sought for parallels between Indian, Greek and Roman civilizations. It was an era that saw the world in terms of civilizations and that anticipated civilizational progress.15
Writing Rajasthan We turn from Tod the man to Tod the author. What paradigms and concepts, tropes and metaphors, assumptions and tacit knowledge, did he bring to the writing of the Annals? Why and how did he write the Annals the way he did? We read Rajasthan not only as a work of positive scholarship about history and ethnography and legend and myth but also as a text which can be explicated as intel-
14 Such names as James Prinsep, Charles Wilkins, H.H. Wilson, H.T. Colebrooke. See Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society and Keay, India Discovered. 15 For a more nuanced, detailed and footnoted account of our critique of orientalism, see Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, “Occidentalism and Orientalism: Perspectives on Legal Pluralism,” in Sally C. Humphries (ed.), Cultures of Scholarship (Ann Arbor, 1997), pp. 219–51.
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lectual history. In this article we identify and analyze authors and ideas, the mental constructs, that Tod brought to bear on the selection and interpretation of the massive evidence he so assiduously and meticulously compiled.16 We find that his interpretation was animated by three related metaphors or models, medieval feudalism, romantic nationalism and civilizational progress. The most conspicuous influence on the writing of Rajasthan is Henry Hallam’s Middle Ages.17 First published in 1818, various editions of Hallam’s work shaped perceptions and historiography in Britain, France and the United States for most of the nineteenth century. References to it dominate the five chapters of
16 Critical readings from the earliest reviews until today have dealt with factual “mistakes” with respect to lineages, dates, events, and with conceptual or theoretical “mistakes” such as, as in the case of Alfred Lyall, with too strongly discounting the clan or tribal aspect of Rajput society and rule in order to privilege the feudal aspect. With the recent exception of Norbert Peabody’s 1996 critique of Ronald Inden’s reading in Imagining India (Oxford, 1990), they have not dealt with tropes and analogies that shaped his conceptual imagination and narratives (N. Peabody, “Tod’s Rajasthan and the Boundaries of Imperial Rule in Nineteenthcentury India”, Modern Asian Studies, 30,1 (1996)). 17 Tod draws upon Henry Hallam’s View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, 2 vols (London, 1818). The only comprehensive intellectual-cum-biographical study of Hallam known to us is Peter Clark’s Henry Hallam (Boston, 1982). Clark provides detailed bibliographical references to works by and about Hallam. He reports inter alia that during Hallam’s lifetime there were eleven editions of the Middle Ages. After Hallams’s death in 1859 two more editions of the Middle Ages were published in 1868 and 1872. In the United States the Middle Ages was even more successful: four editions were published there in the 1889s and 1890s. In France, Hallam’s work went through four editions and in Italy one. Clark tells us that “In his day (Hallam) was regarded as the doyen of English historians. . . . the framework he used and the conclusions he reached were substantially those of his successors. . . . Stubbs, Froude and Gardiner . . . because the Victorian historians were working with the same terms of reference. Hallam saw himself as a philosophical historian—in the tradition of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Thus Hallam is an essential link between Hume and Stubbs . . . his work had an appeal to the generation of 1830–1870, and helped in the making of the historical consciousness of that generation . . . The Queen, Gladstone, and Disraeli all read (his works). Apart from Clarks work, for Hallam’s life, including the Hallam family’s relationship to Alfred Tennyson, see A.J. Byatt’s fictionalized account in Angles and Insects (London, 1992). In Memorium (1850), the work that established Tennyson’s reputation, was written to remember Arthur Hallam, Henry’s son, the fiancé of Tennyson’s sister, whose youthful death struck an important chord in Romantic consciousness. As we point out below, Tod celebrated youthful, heroic death. A searching critique of Tod’s conception of feudalism can be found in Chapter One, “Something Very Like Feudalism,” in Robert Stern’s The Cat and the Lion; Jaipur State in the British Raj (Leiden, 1988).
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the framing section of Volume I, “Sketch of A Feudal System in Rajasthan”. In the opening pages of these generative chapters, written we imagine circa 1828 when he is finishing the first volume of Rajasthan, we read that, many years have passed since I first entertained these opinions [that the Rajpoot states martial system is analogous to the ancient feudal system of Europe], long before [1818 when] . . . any connection existed between these states and the British government; when their geography [which Tod did so much to establish] was little known to us, and their history still less so [again, Tod makes it known]. At that period I frequently travelled amongst them for amusement, making these objects [e.g. geography and history] subservient thereto, and laying the result freely before my government.
Tod then treats directly with the authors that shaped his world view: I had abundant sources of intelligence to guide me in forming my analogies: Montesquieu, Hume, Millar, Gibbon; but I sought only general resemblances and lineaments similar to those before me.18
He then reveals the decisive source for reading Rajasthan texts and archives; oral and written bardic literature; and rituals and politics of Mewar court society—in the light of medieval feudalism. A more perfect source, because more familiar picture, has since appeared [in 1818] by an author [here he footnotes “Hallam’s Middle Ages”], who has drawn aside the veil of mystery which covered the subject, owing to its being till then but imperfectly understood. I compared the features of Rajpoot society with the finished picture of this eloquent writer, and shall be satisfied with having substantiated the claim of these tribes to participation in a system, hitherto deemed to belong exclusively to Europe. I am aware, of the danger of hypothesis, and shall advance nothing that I do not accompany by incontestable proofs.19
18 For insightful and telling interpretations inter alia of Montesquieu, Millar and Hume, see Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests; Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, 1997). For Gibbon see the introduction by David Womersley in his recently edited republication of Edward Gibbon, The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1994), Vol. I, pp. xi–cviii. Tod cites Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works, Vol. III. 19 These passages are from Lieut.-Col. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan or, The Central and Western Rajpoot States of India, two volumes in one with a preface by Douglas Sladen (London, 1914; reprinted in 1923 and 1950), Vol. I, pp. 107–8.
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Tod’s Scottish ancestry played an crucial role in his romantic turn to feudalism and classicism. Byron, for example, was from Scotland, a country with powerful links to late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Romanticism. Indeed, Byron was very much on Tod’s mind both as a poet and, as we shall see below, a fellow activist in support of Greek nationalism. In Chapter XXX of Volume 1 on Ajmer, Tod reports his first sight of “the [Chauhan] castle of Manika Rae [at Ajmer] where the first Rajpoot blood which the arms of conversion shed” summoned up an image for him from Byron’s Childe Harold: There was a day when they were young and proud, Banners on high, and battles passed below; But they who fought are in a bloody shroud, And those which wave are shredless dust ere now, And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow.20
Scottish too was Sir Walter Scott, “the herald of the medieval revival . . . and the inventor of a fictitious sentimental national tradition . . .”21 Scottish Enlightenment luminaries such as of David Hume, Adam Smith, John Millar and Edward Gibbon, who was “for all intents and purposes . . . intellectually a Scot,”22 shaped Tod’s historical understanding, including his view of stages in the course of realizing “civilization”.23 Starting with Waverly set in the Highlands in 1814 and more or less ending with The Surgeon’s Daughter set in
20 The quote from Childe Harold is From Canto iii and is cited in Rajasthan, Vol. 1, p. 612. Tod cites Byron again in Vol. 2 (p. 510) when deploring the Company’s policy toward cultivation of opium, “this execrable and demoralising plant”. “We have saved Rajpootana,” he writes, “from political ruin; but the boon of mere existence will be valueless if we fail to restore the moral energies of her population; for of this fine region and noble race we might say, as Byron does of Greece— ‘Tis Greece—but living Greece no more! ’.” 21 Martin Bernal, Black Athena (New Brunswick NY, 1990), Vol. 1, p. 291. 22 Herman, How the Scots, p. 226. Herman says of Gibbon “although English (he) modeled his work closely on the Scottish and Edinburgh historical school . . . One of his closest friends was Adam Ferguson, but his other heroes were Hume and Smith, whose new book, The Wealth of Nations, Gibbon called “the most profound and systematic treatise on the great objects of trade and revenue which had ever been published in any age or century”. When Hume wrote to Gibbon praising his new history, Gibbon said the letter “repaid the labour of ten years” (pp. 225–6). 23 These are the persons associated with the Scottish enlightenment that Tod cites in “Sketch of the feudal system in Rajasthan” (Vol. I, pp. 107–58). As has been noted above, he relies in this section most heavily on Henry Hallam but Montesquieu is also of considerable importance for Tod’s formulation.
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India in 1827, Scott spread Romanticism by inventing the historical novel and with it the mass market for novels, a market which English novelists such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope and continental novelists such as Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert and Tolstoy were the beneficiaries. The historical novel was a new art form that paved the way for Tod’s Rajasthan by imagining difference and embracing the other. An “intriguing blend of imaginative fantasy and meticulous fidelity to historical truth”, it celebrated “emotional loyalties rather than economic calculation [and] . . . heroic self-sacrifice rather than rational self-interest”.24 In this way Scott introduced a key ingredient in modern consciousness, a sense of historical detachment”, something that Macaulay25 and other utilitarian and evangelical early Victorians lacked but something that enabled Tod to imagine and, to an extent, be the Rajput other. The Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan was written and published for a reading public whose tastes and sensibilities had been shaped by several generations of “romantic” authors.26 Repudiating eighteenthcentury Enlightenment rationalism and market commercialism the Romantics celebrated nature, sentiment, the picturesque and the exotic and sometimes erotic other. Romantics like Byron, but also Shelley, are particularly important because, in an era when East India Company trade, conquest and politics was center stage in the drama of English public life, the extravagant orientalism of their literary productions about India catered to a burgeoning public demand.27 In May 1813 Byron urged the Irish poet Tom Moore,
24 Herman, How the Scots, pp. 308–10. For much of the detail and some of the interpretation of Scottish Romanticism I am indebted to Herman’s chapter on Scott “The last minstrel: Sir Walter Scott and the Highland revival” (pp. 291–319). Herman argues that Scott’s novels introduced several key components of “modern consciousness” including cultural conflict. History is presented as a series of “culture wars”: Frank versus Saracen (in The Talisman), Jew versus Christian (in Ivanhoe), Norman versus Saxon, Scotsman versus Englishman, Lowlander versus Highlander, Presbyterian versus Episcopalian . . . Which side is superior, and which deserves to lose, is never fully resolved.” (p. 310) 25 Herman, How the Scots, p. 310. 26 For example Edmund Burke, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron; Edward Gibbon. 27 See Nigel Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge, 1993).
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to join him on the bandwagon of “oriental” poetry: “Stick to the East”—the oracle Stael [Madame De Stael] told me it was the only poetical policy . . . The little I have done in that way is merely a “voice in the wilderness” for you; and, if it has had any success, that also will prove that the public are orientalizing, and pave the path for you.28
Tod’s own romanticism is epitomized in our view by his attitude toward heroic death, particularly heroic youthful death. To die in battle fighting gallantly for a noble cause may have been the highest form of glory for a feudal knight. To die young in battle was even more glorious. Youth was the apogee of life; after the bloom of youth came decay then death. These perceptions and attitudes are captured in Tod’s account of the death of the sixteen year old Putta of Kelwa in 1568 when a Mughal army under Akbar’s command sacked Chitor, symbol of the Rajput’s code of honor: But the names which shine brightest in the gloomy page of the annals of Mewar, which are still held sacred by the bard and the true Rajpoot, and immortalised by Akbar’s own pen, are Jeimul of Bednore and Putta of Kailwa . . . When Saloombra29 fell at the gate of the sun, the command devolved on Putta of Kelwa. He was only sixteen: his father had fallen in the first shock, and his mother had survived but to rear his the sole heir of the house. Like the Spartan mother of old, she commanded him to put on the “safron robe”, and to die for Cheetore: but surpassing the Greecian dame, she illustrated her percept by example; and lest any soft “compunctious visitings” . . . might dim the lustre of Kailwa, she armed the young bride [of her son] with a lance, with her descended the rock, and the defenders of Cheetore saw her fall, fighting by the side of her Amazonian mother . . . Jeimul took the lead on the fall of the kin of Mewar . . . He saw there was no ultimate hope of salvation, the northern defences being entirely destroyed, and he resolved to signalize the end of his career. The fatal Johur was commanded, while eight thousand Rajpoots ate the last ‘beera’ [pan; according to Tod without opium] together and put on their saffron robes; the gates were thrown open, the work of destruction commenced, and few survived “to stain the yellow mantle” by inglorious surrender.30
Tod’s romanticism in Rajasthan emerged in the shadow of a struggle over British policy in India. The struggle took the form of a
28
Leask, British Romantic Writers, p. 13. Saloombra, estate of the Chandawat leader. He led Mewar forces in the battle. It is common to call particular persons by the name of their estate. 30 Tod, Rajasthan (ed. Douglas Sladen, 1920, 2 vols in 1), Vol. 1, p. 201. 29
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clash of civilizational understandings. Were the Rajput kingdoms to be alien and conquered peoples who paid tribute to swell the coffers of the Company or were they to be respected and trusted allies who shared a common interest in the security and welfare of the Indian subcontinent? More broadly, were Indians, as Kipling three generations later would have it, “lesser breeds without the law” for whom British’s rulers were called upon to assume “the white man’s burden” to civilize? Or were they the bearers of an ancient civilization who should be cultivated as worthy allies? Tod’s differences with David Ochterlony over how to treat Mewar and other Rajput kingdoms31 foreshadowed even more profound philosophical differences with James Mill. In preparation for what became the Company’s new charter in 1834, both gave parliamentary testimony that addressed the theory and practice of British rule in India. Mill’s testimony reflected the views propounded in his six volume The History of British India. It had first appeared in 1817 but remained, until the Company’s demise in 1857, the Company’s de facto official text. Tod’s testimony was consistent with the views propounded in his Rajasthan, the second volume of which was published in the same year that he provided parliamentary testimony, 1832. Mill spoke as a “liberal” utilitarian, Tod as a romantic conservative.32 Mill’s “liberal” utilitariansim tended to deny difference in the name of a commitment to universal truth. It was an axiom about human nature, for example, that persons maximized pleasure and minimized pain and an axiom of public policy to seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Such truths are independent of time, place and circumstance. They determine human consciousness, preferences and actions everywhere and always. In pursuit of sameness and uni-
31 Sinha and Das Gupta (eds.), Ochterlony Papers (1818–1825). About one third of 230 Rajputana Residency Records printed in this volume present the voice and views of Tod or Ochterlony. Like the parliamentary clash between James Mill and James Tod, these documents reveal profound ideological and policy differences between the two men involved. 32 James Mill, “Testimony to Parliament dated 16 February, 1832, Reports from Committees, Session 6. December 1831–16 August 1832”, in Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, VI: Political or Foreign, Vols VII, XIV (London: House of Commons, Parliament of England, 1832), pp. 3–10; and James Tod. “Testimony to Parliament, Reports from Committees, Session 6 December 1831–16 August 1832, Appendix 13.” Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, VI: Political or Foreign, Vols VII, XIV (London: House of Commons, Parliament of England, 1832), pp. 122–35.
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formity, Mill’s utilitarian universalism could also lead to policies and actions designed to destroy rather than to deny difference, to conversions of idolaters rather than to legislation designed to civilize the other so that they become like us. Tod’s romantic conservatism tends to respect the other, to sympathize, even to empathize with difference as it appears in diverse forms of life. Tod respects, admires and even identifies with the Rajput other. Ultimately, in a distant future, he imagines that a hypothesized common Scythian origin of Britons and Rajputs and civilizational progress will enable Britons and Rajputs to realize a common brotherhood. Mill’s and Tod’s parliamentary testimonies in 1832, like their respective major works, reflect respectively what Uday Singh Mehta, in Liberalism and Empire, represents as a Lockean view of human sameness and a Burkean view of human diversity.33 Mill’s and Tod’s opposed perspectives on the meaning and consequences of differences in culture and religion, world view and way of life, not only animated the ideological debate in the formative years of colonialism in India but also foreshadow today’s debate about whether civilizations can live in concord or must clash.
Tod and nationalism Tod wrote not only under the spell of Henry Hallam’s medievalism and Scottish romanticism, but also at the opening phase of modern nationalism. As indicated already by his invocation of Greek parallels in the Putta story cited above and, more generally, frequent allusions to events and symbols of ancient Greece, Tod’s writing was deeply influenced by its “classical” civilization. In 1821, what was
33 Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; A Study in Nineteenth Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999). Mehta contrasts Burke’s commitment to the naturalness of difference with Locke’s commitment to the naturalness of uniformity. Burke, he tells us, “reflected with great seriousness on the situation in which the exercise of power and authority was implicated with considerations of cultural and racial diversity, contrasting civilizational unities, the absence of . . . consensual government, and alternative forms of political identity and legitimacy”. (pp. 134–55) If difference was all for Burke, if persons were always and inevitably marked, for the liberal Locke, sameness was all. Human nature was the same everywhere and always. Locke articulates “liberal universalism” from which “. . . claims can be made because they derive from certain characteristics that are common to all human being”. (pp. 51–2).
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believed to be ancient Greece’s contemporary expression, a Hellenic Greek nation, began a struggle for “national liberty” against the “despotic” rule of the Ottoman Turks. This riveted attention in Europe and America on a people imagined by Adamantios Koraes from his Paris exile as “Hellenes”, a nation descended from the “classical” Greets of Sparta and Athens, and thus the fountainhead and inspiration of European civilization.34 It was their freedom struggle with which Tod identified and that shaped the writing of Rajasthan. As Nigel Leask makes clear in British Romantic Writers and the East; Anxieties of Empire, romantic poets such as Byron and Shelley were not only passionately philhellenic but also passionately orientalist.35 With the outbreak of the Greek war for independence in 1821 Shelly wrote: “We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts all have their roots in Greece.”36 Tod’s narrative of Mewar’s struggle against the Mughal Empire resembles his perception of the Greek struggle against the Ottoman Turks; Rana Pratap’s near victory over the Mughals at the battle of Haldighati [1576] is likened to Sparta’s resistance against overwhelming Persian force at Thermopylae. Norbert Peabody has shown how Tod’s Rajasthan introduced the discourse of the “nation” by analyzing and explaining differences between Rajputs and Marathas and alluding to territorialized cultural boundaries separating them. Tod was not being anachronistic in his use of terms such as nation and nationalism. These terms were already being used during the Napoleonic wars by the British with respect to the rest of Europe. The future East India Company Governor-General, Lord Bentinck [1828–1833], captured this paradoxical relationship epigrammatically when, upon his arrival in Palermo in 1811, he is said to have remarked, “Bonaparte makes kings; England makes nations”.37
34 Michael Herzfeld opens his Anthropology through the Looking Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (Cambridge, 1987; 1989) with the following sentence: “Ancient Greece is the idealized spiritual and intellectual ancestor of Europe” (p. 1). For views of this large and contested interpretation see his Ours Once and More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (Texas, 1982), in particular Chapter 1, “Past glories, present politics” (pp. 3–23), as well as Chapter 1, “Romanticism and Hellenism: burdens of otherness” in his Anthropology through the Looking Glass (pp. 1–27). More than any other person, Adamantios Koraes (1748–1833) invented the imagined community of Hellenic Greeks. Inter alia he aroused Jefferson’s interest in the cause of Greek liberty. 35 Leask, British Romantic Writers. 36 Preface to Percy B. Shelly, Hellas (1821). 37 Peabody refers to “The Rajput Nation” and discusses “The nation in early
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Years ago when we first began writing about Tod’s mentality we could only surmise that his thinking was deeply affected by the opening phases of nationalism in Europe. We wondered whether the Greek freedom struggle against the Ottoman Turks that riveted European (and American) attention when it “began” in 1821 had come to Tod’s attention in what, from a European perspective, was a remote corner of India, Mewar. The struggle was depicted an effort by a “nation” imagined as “Hellenes”, descendants of the ancient Greeks and perceived as inventors of European civilization, to liberate themselves from the Ottoman Turks’ “despotism”. We had inferred that Tod might have modelled his account of Mewar’s freedom struggle against the might of Akbar’s Mughal Empire on the Hellenic Greek’s struggle against the Ottoman Turks but couldn’t substantiate it. Was it at best an elective affinity? The discovery in the Saraswati Bandar Library, Udaipur, some years ago by our colleague and research associate, Indu Shekar, of a “Register of Bills Drawn by the Political Agent with the Western Rajpoot States . . .” for 1821 and 1822 with the periodic entries signed by James Tod, Political Agent Western Rajputana, together with five manuscript essays, provides strong grounds for believing that Tod was not only aware of but strongly identified with the Greece’s struggle for “national liberty”.38 Apparently dictated to several amanuenses, one of the five manuscripts is labelled simply “Greece”. A version of this essay with the title “Greece in 1823 and 1824” that closely accords with the MS found in the Saraswati Bandar Library, Udaipur, along with the four other essays, was published anonymously in volume 3, no. 11, November 1824 of The Oriental Herald. The Oriental Herald began publication in January 1824 under the editorship of James Silk Buckingham. Both Buckingham and Tod were expelled from India in 1823, Buckingham from Calcutta, Tod from Udaipur, for opposing
nineteenth-century thought” and “Imperialism, nationalism, and the social construction of difference”. According to Peabody “. . . Tod’s notion of the nation was based on differentiation of insider from outsider, or native from foreigner, categories whose context dependency makes them classic examples of ‘group shifters’” (Peabody, “Tod’s Rajasthan”, pp. 204–11; the reference to Bentinck is at p. 209). 38 In addition to the essay entitled “Greece” the essays are entitled “The Periodical Literature of the Nineteenth Century”, “Historical Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Probable Results of the Sovereignty of the English in India”, “On the Education of Youth for Civil Offices in India”, and “Proposal for Introducing into England the Practice of Burning the Dead”.
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Company policies and persons.39 The editorial stance of Buckingham’s Calcutta Journal was to advocate the abolition of the Company’s monopoly and the suppression of its political power. Tod had opposed David Ochterlony’s efforts to extract maximum tribute from Mewar and other Rajput kingdoms and to treat their rulers as oriental despots. Tod sympathized and emphasized with Rajasthan’s Rajput rulers and thought Britain should respect their civilization and treat them as friends and allies. In the words of his dedication to George IV in the first volume of Rajasthan (1829), The Rajpoot princes, happily rescued, by the triumph of the British arms, from the yoke of lawless oppression, are now the most remote tributaries to Your Majesty’s extensive empire; and their admirer and annalist may, perhaps, be permitted to hope, that the sighs of this ancient and interesting race for the restoration of their former independence, which it would suit our wisest policy to grant, may be deemed not undeserving of Your Majesty’s regard.
We assume that at least one of the five manuscript essays, the one on “Greece in 1823 and 1824” which reviews Col. Leicester Stanhope’s book, Greece in 1823 and 1824 could not have been written in 1821 or 1822, the years of Tod’s financial accounts of his agency and his last two years in India.40 It is possible that Tod wrote one or more of the essays, including the one on “Greece,” after he arrived in England from India in April 1823, published one or more of them in the Oriental Herald and sent amanuenses copies to Mewar to be kept with his papers there. Even if Tod did not write “Greece” or the other essays, we believe the essays reflect his values and perspective. We have not as yet found evidence that Tod and Buckingham knew each other but even if they did not know each other it seems clear that they shared oppo-
39 An extensive and detailed account of Buckingham’s conflict with the East India Company, particularly with the acting Governor-General John Adam, was published in January 1824, in the first volume and number of The Oriental Herald under the title “Appeal of a Governor-General to Public Opinion in India” which is, in fact, Buckingham’s 71 page answer to John Adam’s “Statement of Facts connected with the Removal from India of Mr. Buckingham, Late Editor of the Calcutta Journal.” (pp. 6–77). The ideological and policy battle between Tod and Ochterlony can be followed in detail in Sinha and Das Gupta, Selections from Ochterlony Papers. 40 Being a Series of Letters and Other Documents on the Greek Revolution, written during a Visit to that Country (London, 1824).
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sitionist views about Company rule in India and the importance and value of public opinion and of “national liberty”. They also shared ties to Col. Leicester Stanhope, whose book about his experiences in Greece was reviewed in the “Greece” essay. We know, for example, from army-lists for the Third Anglo-Maratha War, a war, as we have seen, in which Tod’s intelligence operation played a vital role, that the Cavalry Brigade of the Gujarat Division of the army of the Deccan was commanded by Lt. Col. The Hon’ble L. Stanhope. It seems highly probable that Tod and Stanhope knew each other in India, a relationship which supports the inference that Tod wrote the “Greece” essay reviewing Stanhope’s book. It is also possible that James Silk Buckingham, a prolific writer and a intrepid editor, wrote some or all of the essays. Whether Tod or Buckingham wrote some or all of them, we feel confident that the essay on “Greece” provides strong evidence of Tod’s deep knowledge of and identification with the 1821 “Hellenic” Greek rebellion against Ottoman rule. Here is some of the language from the opening paragraphs of that essay: The glorious revolutions of Greece has strongly attracted the attention of all liberal men, to whom it had long appeared surprising that that classic land, the very birth-place and cradle of liberty, should have remained during so many centuries under the yoke of foreign tyrants . . . in every corner of Europe, this glorious result of the struggle excited the warmest admiration, and in almost every country the spirit of the people was roused to participation in so noble a cause . . . In Switzerland, in Germany, and even in Russia, committees have been organized to assist in the regeneration of Grecian liberty, and a portion at least of the English people followed speedily the example which had been set before them by others. Assisted by the contributions of this part of the British public, the Greek Committee of London, at the head of which were many noble and respected names, exerted itself with success in forwarding the progress of Grecian liberty and independence. . . . [The Honorable Colonel Leicester Stanhope] offered his services to proceed to Greece as agent of the Committee . . . and he soon departed from London with full powers . . . to act, on his arrival in Greece, in conjunction with Lord Byron for the advancement of the cause in which they had both so zealously embarked.
We find echoes of this memoir in Tod’s Rajasthan where he tells us that Mewar’s battle with the Mughals at Haldighati in 1576 is like the Spartans’ battle at Thermopylae with the Persians. Thus by using the Hellenic Greek’s struggle for freedom and independence against
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the Ottoman Turks to construct Mewar’s against the Mughals, he assimilates both to a classical paradigm, Sparta’s defense of Greek freedom against a Persian other.
Reading Rajasthan In the naturalized categories of official Raj ethnography, an ethnography that Princely India came to share, Rajasthan’s kingdoms were ruled by Rajputs. The term Rajput encompassed both kshatriya and aristocratic status, both the warrior-rule var»a of India’s ancient texts41 and the landed nobility and gentry familiar to English discourse. British discourse about “caste” conflated not only jàti and var»a but also culture and biology; genetic codes determined character and status.42 Jats were by nature cultivators; Rajputs by nature rulers and warriors. In nineteenth-century readings, to be a Rajput was a condition outside history, essential and timeless. From at least Mughal times Rajput identity has been shaped by the oral and written panegyrics of court bards. Ironically, in the late nineteenth century, Rajasthan’s paramount bardic authority had become Colonel James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Published in 1829 and 1832, his two volumes had become not only the authoritative version of bardic literature but also the dominant historiog-
41 The social ideology of varna appears in the °g Veda, The Laws of Manu and other brahmanical texts and was accepted until recently as authoritative by “Indologists” from Max Müller to Max Weber to Louis Dumont. Var»a social ideology depicted “caste” in terms of brahmans (priests), kshatriyas (warrior rulers), vaishyas (merchants), shudras (manual workers, including peasants and artisans) and untouchables (mlecchas or “foreigners”; conquered people or Dasas; those outside the caste system including latter day “unclean” or “impure” “untouchables” whom the British, and after independence, the Government of India, designated “scheduled castes”). The origin myth from the °g Veda speaks of the “Sacrifice of the Cosmic Man”; brahmans issued from his mouth, kshatriyas from his arms; vaishyas from his thighs and shudras from his feet. Brahmans, kshatriyas and vaishyas were “twice born”, i.e. taught sacred knowledge, they donned a sacred thread at puberty signifying their spiritual rebirth. Recent scholarship has denaturalized var»a and caste, depicting them as historically constructed and subject to continuous change. See, for example, Romila Thapar, Ancient Indian Social History; Some Interpretations (New Delhi, 1978); our Modernity of Tradition (Chicago, 1967); and Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown, Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge, 1987). 42 For an elaboration of British views of caste in the context of its transformations see our Modernity of Tradition, pp. 15–154.
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raphy for Raj and Princely India. As Tod’s reputation and standing grew in the second half of the nineteenth century, it became difficult to distinguish the local bardic traditions from the import. After 1857, in the post-mutiny and rebellion world of direct rule in British India and paramountcy in Princely India, Tod’s Rajasthan dominated in quite different ways both Raj and Indian nationalist historiography. First of all, Tod’s historiography not only reflected but also contributed to a burgeoning feudal medievalism and to a revival of “classical” Hellenism that gripped Raj consciousness and practice in the second half of the nineteenth century.43 For the postMutiny Raj in need of an ideology to legitimate direct rule, Tod’s account of Rajputana’s ancient dynasties, feudal kingdoms and chivalric honor fuelled the construction of the princes as loyal vassals of the crown. In 1876, for example, Disraeli agreed with Queen Victoria’s controversial request to be styled Empress of India.44 Lord Lytton, the viceroy, used the momentous occasion to orchestrate a Mughal style durbar at Delhi in January 1877. Victoria was declared Empress of India, India’s princes, not least among them Rajput rulers, acknowledged her rule and declared their loyalty. The princes in turn were accorded pride of place in a new imperial cosmology that recognized them as India’s “natural leaders”, as Lord Curzon called them. The princes’ loyalty and deference to the British crown in the person of Queen Victoria were counted on to legitimize, support and secure British rule in India. Tod would no doubt have disapproved of this culmination because it made clear that Rajput rulers had become what his hopes and policy were directed to avoid, dependents and subordinates of the British. At the same time he would
43 See Florence S. Boos (ed.), History and Communalism: Essay in Victorian Medievalism (New York, 1992). Boos herself writes that the attraction of medievalism arose from “a sense of the ‘medieval’ as alternative culture . . . alternative both to contemporary capitalist and imperialist realpolitics, and to the unrealities of their conventional classical education . . .” (p. 13). For Tod, writing well before the turn of the century, the classical had yet to lose its charm. 44 For an account of Victoria’s keenness about being made Empress of India see Stanley Weintraub, Victoria; An Intimate Biography (New York, 1987), pp. 413–20. The Queen, Weintraub writes, “was anxious about her dignity”. The unification of Germany under Prussia had made her daughter, Vicky, a future Empress. When crowned, Vicky might, in the absence of Parliamentary action, have precedence over her. Disraeli responded to the Queen’s request by shepherding an official titles bill through Parliament (pp. 413–4).
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have approved, we believe, the medievalism and orientalism of the occasion. After 1857, Tod’s account of the chivalric Rajput also opened the way for an imperial theory of martial races.45 In 1857, the year of the mutiny and rebellion, the largely brahman Bengal Army had proved disloyal and treacherous. Tod both naturalized and historicized a warrior-ruler ideal by celebrating one thousand years of Rajput bravery and valor. In the years after the mutiny and rebellion it proved expedient to construct an ideology of martial (“masculine”) and non-martial (“effeminate”) races. Rajputs served as the prototype of the martial races. From Lord Roberts’ reconstruction of a post-Mutiny Indian Army on “racial” lines46 to Lt. General Sir George MacMunn’s The Martial Races of India (1932),47 Tod’s Rajputs served to valorize a racial theory of fighting men. While accepting Sir William Jones’ theory of Indo-European languages and peoples, Tod differed from Jones’ brahman-centric view by holding that Rajputs and Britons shared a common ancestry as descendants of an ancient Scythian people whose empire was thought to have been
45 For the historical circumstances and moral and psychological grounding of British racial ideology about martial and non-martial races, see our The Modernity of Tradition, pp. 165–7: “Within twenty years of the deliberate exclusion of United Province brahmans from the Bengal Army because of their leading role in the rebellion of 1857, the idea that brahmans lacked fighting qualities had become prevailing opinion . . . in English minds at the end of the century, the distinction (between martial and non-martial) was stressed as much for its instrumental utility in the imperialist theory as for its academic interest as a description of caste or regional character. The ‘martial’ races for the most part adhered to the British raj, not because they were martial . . . but for political considerations, the Rajputs because they were the princes of states whose autonomy was threatened by a self governing India, the Muslims because they feared a Hindu majority in independent India . . . Those described as the non-martial races produced nationalism.” 46 See Chapter XIV. “The martial classes” of Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army, its Officers and Men (London, 1986), pp. 341–61, particularly “2: Lord Roberts and his views”, pp. 345–50. 47 MacMunn averred: “The mass of the people of India have neither martial aptitude nor physical courage.” Of India’s 350 million people only 35 million qualified as martial races and of these only 3 million were males between 20 and 35 years of age. Mason adds that “the idea that some people will make soldiers and some will not is of course much older than the British. It is implicit in the Hindu caste system; no raja would have the money-lender or the trader castes to bear arms. But it was the British, after the Mutiny, step by step, who formulated and codified the principle, turning what had been a matter of practical choice into a dogma proclaimed with theological rigour.” (Mason, Honour, pp. 348–9)
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located in and around the Caucasus region of Central Asia.48 The legitimacy of British rule in India and subcontinental security in the era of the “Great Game” in Asia came to rely on co-opting, rewarding and celebrating these “martial races”.49 Different from this colonial reading, Indian nationalists, starting with those in Bengal, brought a different interest to their reading of Tod. Tod’s accounts of Rajput kings and heroes, particularly of the legendary Mewar ruler, Rana Pratap (1572–1597), featured his resistance to the blandishments and power of the Mughal Empire. At Haldighati (1576) Rana Pratap almost defeated the emperor Akbar’s mighty army. For twenty arduous years Pratap’s guerrilla warfare held Mughal power at bay. Tod’s bardic-inspired accounts of Pratap’s fight to preserve Mewar’s independence and honor inspired nationalist plays, poems and histories about India’s first “freedom fighter” against imperial rule.50 Tod’s image of the martial Rajput reached well beyond Bengali nationalism’s search for martial heroes and anti-imperialist freedom fighters. Tod’s Thermopylae trope arrived at the heart of Indian nationalism in the person of Mohandas Gandhi who made it part of his vocabulary. Tod had invoked Thermopylae in the large and
48 For Jones’ view see Thomas R. Trautman, Aryans and British India (New Delhi, 1997), Chapter Two, “The Mosaic Ethnology of Asiatick Jones”, pp. 28–61. 49 Although Tod—and others—in the 1820s already spoke of a potential Russian threat to India, it was Rudyard Kipling’s Kim that introduced the English speaking world to the metaphor of the “Great Game” in Asia. Tod argued for a BritishRajput alliance in part to have the strength on the subcontinent to face Russian ambitions. For the state of play after the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, see Lloyd I. Rudolph, “The Great Game in Asia: Revisited and Revised”, Crossroads: An International Socio-Political Journal, 16 (1985). For an overview see Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game; On Secret Service in High Asia (London, 1990). 50 Rajput history and images influenced the thinking and writing of eminent Bengalis including Henry Louis DeRozio, Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Rabindranath Tagore (see his Kathu-o-Kahini for several Rajput poems, including one expressing his disillusionment after actually visiting Rajasthan in the late 1930s. My thanks to the late Sujit Mukherjee for calling this poem to my attention and doing a rough translation for me. General works on the influence of Rajput history and legend on nationalist consciousness, starting with consciousness in Bengal, include Papia Chakrabarty, Hindu Response to Nationalist Ferment: Bengal 1909–1935 (Calcutta, 1992); Amrita Lal De, The Student’s History of Rajpootana, being an Account of the Princes of Rajpootana from the Earliest Ages to the Modern Times (Calcutta, 1889); Dalia Ray, The Bengal Revolutionaries and Freedom Movement (New Delhi, 1990); Ashis Sanyal, Contributions of Bengali Writers to National Freedom Movement (Calcutta, 1989). I am indebted to Jason Freitag’s “The Power which raised them from Ruin” for some of these references.
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in the small, in the large by analogizing Rana Pratap’s battle with Akbar’s army at Haldighati, a defilade like that at Thermopylae, and in the small by remarking that “there is not a petty State in Rajasthan that has not had its Thermopylae”.51 In 1920, just six years after his return to India from 21 years in South Africa, Gandhi told members of a Hindu audience at the Law College in Madras fearful of Muslim martial traditions that they too could call on a legacy of bravery and courage. Col. Tod, Gandhi told them, had said that India was “dotted with a thousand Thermopaelies”.52 Gandhi’s use of Tod was capped by his invocation of him to convince participants at the momentous Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931 that India was capable of defending itself: There is all the material there . . . Mohammedans . . . Sikhs . . . the Gurkha. . . . Then there are the Rajputs, who are supposed to be responsible for a thousand Thermopylaes, and not one little Thermopylae . . . That is what the Englishman, Colonel Tod, told us. Colonel Tod has taught us to believe that every pass in Rajputana is a Thermopylae. Do these people stand in need of learning the art of defense?53
Tod’s framing of Mewar’s struggle to preserve its freedom had an enduring impact. Fifty years later, in 1879, the romance of the ancient, freedom loving Rajputs was still alive and well in Sir Alfred Lyall’s authoritative historical note to the first Gazetteer of Rajputana. Lyall wrote: We may describe Rajputana as the region within which the pureblooded Rajput States have maintained their independence under their own chieftains, and have kept together their primitive54 societies ever since their principal dynasties in Northern India were cast down and swept away by the Mussalman irruption. Of the States of Rajputana, eighteen belong to the first rank in the Empire, being under treaty with the Imperial Government.55
51
Tod, Rajasthan, I, p. lxiii. Mahatma Gandhi, Collected Works (New Delhi, 1958–), 18, p. 189. 53 Gandhi, Collected Works, 48, p. 307. 54 Discourse about “primitive” is insightfully explored in Marianna Torgovnick’s Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago, 1990). Torgovnick tells us that “. . . primitive societies or the general idea of the primitive becomes a place to project our feelings about the present and to draw blueprints of the future. Sometimes narratives about primitive societies become allegories of modernization that resist seeing themselves or presenting themselves as allegories” (p. 244). 55 The quotation is from the historical introduction to Rajputana and Ajmer; List of 52
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By 1928, when Sir Walter Lawrence, the Viceroy, Lord Curzon’s private secretary, published his memoirs, The India we served, the myth of the noble Rajputs had reached its apogee. Lawrence uses a facsimile of Rudyard Kipling’s handwritten letter as the preface to his book; it refers to Lawrence’s book as a “fairytale”, a book that captures the timeless India of Kipling’s imperial imagination. For Lawrence, The highest type [of Indian] with which I am acquainted . . . is the Rajput of Rajputana . . . I like to think that the . . . Indians of ancient times . . . resembled closely the fine thoroughbred men now living in Rajputana—whether they be called Kshattriyas . . . or Aryans . . . still always great and chivalrous gentlemen, with whom it is a privilege and an education to associate.56
These cultural enthusiasms and panegyrics, which fit well into late nineteenth-century imperial mise-en-scène, have been overtaken by recent critiques of Rajput historiography and identity.57 Dirk Kolff ’s historical unpacking of the term “Rajput” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveals a variety of possibilities for Rajput identity and status. Kolff, for example, argues that before Mughal rule in the seventeenth century, “Rajput” was not a closed status category.
Ruling Princes, Chiefs and Leading Personages (Calcutta, 1931. This is the sixth edition of a “work projected in 1890 by Colonel G.H. Trevor, C.S.I., Agent to the GovernorGeneral for Rajputana . . . and put together by C.S. Bayley, C.S., then Political Agent, Bikaner”. Some of the account in the historical introduction was written as early as 1879. 56 Sir Walter Lawrence, The India we served (London, 1928), p. 56. Here we see how “Rajput” took on gentlemanly overtones. For narratives, histories and tropes of “gentleman”, see Rupert Wilkinson, Gentlemanly Power (New York, 1964). 57 Norman Ziegler’s study of the Khyàt of Nainsi, a seventeenth-century Jodhpur administrator, shows how Mughal administrative categories and practices were assimilated into Rajput political ideas and practices. It also suggests the creation of a more complex and hierarchical status order on analogies with Mughal court society. Ziegler’s study of fifteenth-century Rajput folksongs and tales is striking for the absence in them of the florid literary and cultural embellishments of the later bardic accounts, and suggests that Kolff’s characterizations of Rajputs, of which more below, as plain fighting men of diverse origins may apply to Rajputs in Rajputana as well as in other parts of North India (“The Seventeenth Century Chronicles of Marvara: A Study in the Evolution and use of Oral Traditions in Western India”, History in Africa, 3 (1976); “Marvari Historical Chronicles: Sources for the Social and Cultural History of Rajasthan”, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 13 (1976)). Nicholas Dirks, in his The Hollow Crown, argues that the political processes associated with kingship rather than canonical texts or brahmanic understandings determined social preference and standing, including caste identity and privileges. South Indian kings, he argues, used symbolic and material resources under their control to reshape or constitute status orders and castes.
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The pre-Mughal term “Rajput” referred to persons with multiple identities—e.g. place and sect—only one of which was that of a fighting man. Pre-Mughal Rajputs, Kolff tells us, were recruited from village-based military labor markets structured by the agricultural production cycle. The aristocratic Rajput of ancient lineage, Kolff argues, is a creature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when, under the influence of the Mughal court culture, “something like a new Rajput Great Tradition” takes shape.58 Raj officials after 1858 willingly endorsed the Rajput Great Tradition story, a story that justified placing Rajput princes at the center of the imperial ensemble as loyal but independent feudatories. It was an arrangement that suited the often socially ambitious British middle class members of the Indian Civil Service eager for deference from the exotic princes and aristocrats with whom they hobnobbed and from whom they expected compliance.59
58 “During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the top layer of Rajputs (in Rajputana), encouraged by the openings presented by the Mughal state and helped by the expertise of their bards, tended to . . . articulate new norms of Rajput behavior. Bards had always encouraged their Rajput employers to assume aristocratic self-images closely linked with myths of origin that established their status as kshatriyas and traced back their genealogies to, for instance, the great dynasties of ancient Indian history. . . . The tendency to interpret Rajput history in genealogical terms was later inherited by Tod and other British administrators . . . . something like a new Rajput Great Tradition emerged (in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) which could recognize little else than unilineal kin bodies as the elements of which genuine Rajput history ought to be made up.” Dirk H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 72–73). Kolff sees the “original Rajputs” as an open status group in which, as late as the nineteenth century, included “errant soldier, migrant labourer, or pack-animal trader”. This interpretation is not accepted by many contemporary Rajputs who hold that Rajputs are descended from an historical Ram or from his sons. For a debate about Rajput status a generation ago, see Rushton Coulborn (ed.), Feudalism in History (Princeton NJ, 1956) and the debate that followed about “feudalism” as a universal category. For example did it exist as a “stage” of development in India and Japan? The debate at that time about whether Rajputs in India were a feudal status category or class was innocent of the understanding suggested here that Tod, who established the term for India, used Henry Hallam’s reading of medieval feudalism as the core of his historiographical construction of feudalism in India. 59 Aspects of these perceptions and attitudes can be gleaned from E.M. Forster’s Passage to India and Paul Scott’s four volume The Jewel in the Crown. Philip Woodruff’s The Men who ruled India, 2 vols (London, 1953–4) traces the evolution of East India Company and Indian Civil Service (ICS) mentalities. Clive Dewey’s recent study shows the complexity of cultural provenance, motive and intention among several prominent late nineteenth-century ICS officers (C. Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Servant (London and Rio Grande, 1993)).
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Indeed, during the great revolt in 1857 against British rule most of Rajputana’s princes sided with the British.60 Their help in a time of peril ushered in an era of mutual appreciation and support that lasted to independence in 1947. After 1857, the Raj relied increasingly on Princely India as a source of legitimacy and political support. The princes in turn came to rely on British recognition and power to legitimize and secure their rule.
Amar Singh’s diary We conclude by invoking the Rajput we know best, the diarist Amar Singh.61 Particularly in the early years of his diary, he often explored the meaning and consequences of his Rajput identity. His lineage roots are found in the Champawat Rathores from Jodhpur, his status rests on a title and estate of an influential service family in Jaipur, his education and early career were shaped by an influential patron, the celebrated Sir Pratap Singh, for 22 years the Prince Regent of Jodhpur. Sir Pratap’s prominence in the fin-de-siècle imperial great chain of being makes opportunities available to Amar Singh in Princely and British India. Amar Singh initially knows himself from stories about Rajputs that he has heard or read. In September 1898, under the urging of his respected teacher, Barath Ram Nathji, he begins writing his diary, an activity that he continues for 44 years
60 In the opening decades of the nineteenth century, the Company ended lingering Maratha pretensions to imperial status, defeated and pacified the Pindaris, and gradually closed the peasant based military labor market by confining military recruitment to high caste Hindus. As a result, according to Dirk Kolff, “The Company largely achieved the demilitarisation . . . of politics at the regional level”. By 1850, “British North India was almost totally demilitarised . . .” (Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 188). After the bloody and almost successful revolt in 1857 by alienated sepoys, talukdars and princes, a Government of India Act had replaced East India Company with Crown rule. A viceroy representing the British Queen now stood in the place of the Mughal Emperor as the hegemonic power on the Indian subcontinent. In time, the treaties became an important source for the doctrine of paramountcy. See S.N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven (New Delhi, 1957) and Ainslee T. Embree (ed.), India in 1857: The Revolt Against Foreign Rule (Delhi, 1987). 61 See Introduction, Part 1. “Provenance: Making a Self at the Jodhpur Court,” in Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph with Mohan Singh Kanota, Reversing the Gaze; Amar Singh’s Diary, A Colonial Subject’s Narrative of Imperial India (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 1–15.
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until his death on November 1, 1942. He learns about Rajput valor and honor, about Rajput’s contributions to the making and maintaining of the Mughal Empire, about Rana Prataps resistance to Mughal rule and struggle to maintain Mewar’s independence, about Rajput pride of place in the British Raj. The stories he hears about who and what a Rajput is are fed by Col. James Tod’s romantic Eurocentric historiography and neo-bardic, feudal construction of the martial Rajput. But there is another side to his Rajput identity. Like Mohandas Gandhi’s self-critical and radically reformist commitment to his Hindu identity, Amar Singh’s commitment to his Rajput identity is reflexive and self-critical. He knows Rajput ideals, what Rajputs at their best can and should be, but his diary entries are replete with spirited accounts of Rajputs behaving wrongly and badly. Indeed, again like Gandhi, he is familiar with, indeed he often empathizes with the standards and outlook of the imperial British other. He lives liminally, on the border between Princely and British India. He is among the first to serve as a King’s Commissioned Officer in the British Indian Army. After his retirement from the Indian Army in 1922, the 44-year-old Amar Singh returns to Jaipur where he is asked to raise the Jaipur Lancers and becomes something of a guide and mentor to the new Maharaja, the 12-year-old Man Singh. In time he becomes Commander of the Jaipur State Forces. His Rajputness is continuously on trial not only in a public sphere shared with the British but also in the private sphere of extended family life in a 100 person havelì. His reflexivity takes the form inner and outer critiques of who and what the Rajputs have become and should be. Amar Singh dies in November 1942. Five years later, soon after the close of World War II, India gains independence but the country is partitioned into successor states. Less noticed but of great significance for Rajput identity and history, the princely states, including 22 in the Rajputana agency, were “integrated” into the Indian Union. The princes lost what sovereignty they had under “paramountcy”,62 a relationship of “subordinate cooperation” with the
62 See our essay, “Rajputana Under British Paramountcy; The Failure of Indirect Rule,” in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Essays on Rajputana (New Delhi, 1984), pp. 3–37. See also Part VI “Princely Courts in Imperial Space,” of our Reversing the Gaze, pp. 467–556. For the “integration” of the princely states see
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British crown, when they “acceded” to the newly formed Government of India. India’s old regime had begun to crumble. The princely states of Rajasthan were merged into a newly formed state of India’s federal system without a shot being fired. The first state election in 1952 under a universal franchise almost returned a Rajput led government but its potential leader, the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Hanut Singh, an inveterate and intrepid flier, died in a plane crash as the polls closed thereby depriving the princely and feudal order of a potential one seat majority and, more importantly, its leader. In the event leaders of the States’ Peoples’ Freedom Movement, Jai Narayan Vyas of Jodhpur, Manickulal Verma of Udaipur, Hiralal Shastri of Jaipur, who had led their organizations into a newly formed state unit of the Nehru led Congress Party, formed Rajasthan’s first democratically elected government. The new government’s first order of business was “land reform”, a euphemism in Rajasthan for “jàgìr resumption”. It removed, with compensation, Rajput aristocrats from the their revenue bearing landed estates. It also ousted their chhote bhà"ìs, younger brothers, from their small holdings. Dismissed from service with maharajas’ or jàgìrdàrs’ courts and bureaucracies, they now found themselves without jobs and income. There was violence as their tenants, often Jats, forcibly occupied “resumed” lands that their younger brothers claimed as khud-kàsht (self-cultivation) and refused to relinquish. In a civil war of sorts between lesser Rajputs and their erstwhile tenants hundreds of policeman lost their lives while trying to maintain law and order.63 By 1956, when a large contingent of satisfied big Rajput jàgìrdàrs crossed the aisle to join the Mohan Lal Sukhadia led Congress government, the old regime as such disappeared in the merger. Rajputs now tended to join other castes and classes in the competition for power, status and benefits that had begun to characterize India’s democratic politics. Looking back 47 years from the vantage point of a new century since the days when we first encountered Tod’s Rajasthan while living in Jaipur at Bissau House, we ask, what is left of Rajasthan’s
inter alia V.P. Menon, Story of the Integration of the Princely States (New Delhi, 1955) and The Transfer of Power (New Delhi, 1957). 63 See our essay, “The Political Modernization of an Indian Feudal Order: An Analysis of Rajput Adaptation in Rajathan” in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Essays on Rajputana, pp. 38–78.
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feudal society and ideology, of the image of heroism and honor summoned up by mounted warriors defending great castles from invading foes? Tod’s Rajasthan is being replicated for tourists. More tourists visit Rajasthan than any other state. It’s arts and crafts; its folk culture and performance arts; its fairs and fetes; its colorful clothing, turbans and jewelry; its camels and elephants; all contribute to Rajasthan’s appeal. Topping all Rajasthan’s attraction is its Rajput heritage, a heritage of princes and noblemen, their palaces and forts, castles and mansions. Mohan Singh Kanota, our friend and co-author, was instrumental in organizing a Heritage Hotel association among Rajput princes and noblemen. The associations helps Rajputs with palaces, forts and castles to preserve their patrimony while earning an income. They do so by reproducing for tourists from at home and abroad versions of Tod’s Rajasthan. A thin and easily breached line separates preservation and its effort to be authentic and replication epitomized by theme parks, a form of representation that has spread from America to Europe and Japan.64 The preservation of the great forts at Chitor, Kumbalghar, Jodhpur, Jaiselmer and Amber and of hundreds of lesser forts, castles, palaces and havelìs gives us hope that something of Tod’s Rajasthan, itself a partially imagined place, can help Rajasthanis and those who visit Rajasthan to participate in the production and reproduction of Rajasthan.
64 For a discussion on authenticity in the context of identity and replication, see our 2002 Ryerson Lecure at the University of Chicago, “Engaging Subjective Knowledge: Narratives of and by the Self in the Amar Singh Diary”, The University of Chicago Record, 36,4 (2002).
THE IDEA OF MODERNITY: EUROPEAN PROGRESS FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD? Victor van Bijlert
With the inevitability of the weather or the law of gravitation, modernity has been invading human lives for the last three centuries. Modernity poses a great challenge: its history can be traced, its origins can be dug out of the rubble of time, its turns and twists can be charted, its material manifestations can be seen everywhere. But the informing idea behind this outward manifestation of modernity often eludes the perceiver. Modernity is more than a social phenomenon or an historical process. It is the grand utopia of an everreceding future. Taking stock of history reveals the different routes modernity has taken. This exercise reveals that modernity may be of European origin, that it is far from widely accepted and that it incarnates or reincarnates in different world civilisations, including the Indian. The ultimate purpose of modernity depends on human will, internalised values and conscious effort. Modernity, in the last analysis, is a human revolt against fate, chance, unpredictability and lack of control over one’s destiny. What makes modernity attractive is the chances it promises of genuine human progress and happiness.
Modernity and its opposites Modernity is often defined as the opposite of tradition. This is the standard view of most social scientists including historians. Tradition is associated with pre-industrialised societies. These “old worlds”, in Gellner’s view, “were . . . each of them, a cosmos: purposive, hierarchical, ‘meaningful’; and on the other hand, not quite unified, consisting of subworlds each with its own idiom and logic, . . . [the] new world was . . . morally inert, . . . unitary”.1 The received solidity of social hierarchies (often religiously legitimised), or even the
1
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983), p. 23.
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semblance of such solidity constitutes tradition. Tradition is most dramatically observable in the forms of governance based on the unquestioned, God-given rights to rule, be it by a gentry, an aristocracy, a monarchy or an empire. Such traditional forms of governance have been thoroughly and irreparably demolished by modernity. Where modernity moves away from the present into an unknown and unpredictable future, tradition only needs to look at the not too distant past to know how society ought to be maintained and preserved. Opposition to modernity varies from mild conservatism to reactionary militancy. Conservatism denoted the desire to keep the present more or less as it is in the light of received wisdom. Reaction denotes the (often vain) attempt to turn the clock back and reinstall an older order onto society. Reactionaries often regard modern society as immoral and decadent. They strive (often with intensely violent and coercive means such as used by religious fundamentalists or fascists) to bring back modern society to old ways of long ago or to abolish history altogether and return to the alleged purity of a remote past. The conservatives, on the whole, do not wish this, because, as established elites, they do not wish to lose too much ground in violent adventures. Tradition on a local level would be “the tight and pernickety control of the parish and local community”.2 But this is a mild form of tradition. The opposition traditionmodernity is evidently not the only one. Modernity-conservatism and modernity-reaction are the other oppositions. Taking a dialectic view of the modernity issue we can distinguish two opposite forces: modernity’s emancipatory force and conservative and reactionary forces running counter to modernity. Whereas, for instance, modernity emphasises egalitarianism, the reactionary mentality tries to revert to the opposite, namely inequality and stress on (“natural” or “divine”) hierarchies. Modernity seen in this light is not an omnipotent trend, but rather a fledgling trend towards greater personal freedom, and an increasingly more just redistribution of wealth than ever before in human history. Reactionary and elitist mentalities need not necessarily espouse a return or real restoration of absolute monarchy or aristocratic rule. They can hide behind a façade of modernity and yet discredit any of the real characteris-
2
Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford, 1993), p. 22.
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tics of modernity.3 In the sequel we will look at modernity as a state of mind, an ethos, much in the sense of Max Weber’s “spirit of capitalism”. Internalised as conscience, work-ethic, motivation for selfimprovement, modernity compels its followers into continuous mental and physical exertion.4 In the idea of modernity we can identify the following layers. The spiritual or ideal layer consists in the idea that it is possible to achieve full control over one’s own consciousness, one’s own personality in the widest sense and therefore also over one’s destiny. This idea manifests itself in values such as self-realisation, sovereignty of the person, freedom of conscience, a sense of equality of all human beings, the independence of human reason and judgement to discover truth, a feeling of freedom from outer religious or ideological constraints. These comprise ideological modernity. Next comes the social one. Here the idea is of increasing control over the vagaries of fate and chance. This idea manifests itself in social arrangements and organisations, ranging from village schools upto the modern democratic nation-state and democratic supranational bodies. The last layer is the actual realisation of physical control, manifesting itself among others in the production of material wealth within the context of institutions like the nation-state. This includes capitalistic modes of production and distribution; the factory-wise rationalised production of goods; the building of an infrastructure of rapid transport, such as canals, roads, railroads etc.; the creation of means of rapid communication like the printing-press, telegraph and telephone, radio and television and of late the Internet. As the material realisation of modernity gains momentum, it seems modernity’s spiritual aspects are lost sight of.
3 Twentieth-century dictators often invoked ideas associated with modernity such as “freedom”, “literacy”, “general education”, “democratic centralism” etc. to conceal their real motives of striving after absolute power. Recent left-wing issues like deep ecology and alternative cultures are sometimes being infected by extreme rightist and downright Neo-Nazi influences. See: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler’s Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 225–32. 4 Max Weber had already remarked in his famous study on Protestantism and the Capitalist Ethic: “The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so”. Moreover, the economic order is “bound to . . . machine production which today determine the lives of all individuals who are born into this mechanism . . . with irresistible force” (Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. With an introduction by Anthony Giddens (London and New York, 2001), p. 123.
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Nothing could be more devious. A state of mind and a programme of action—really meant for greater human happiness and comfort— turn into a Moloch of technology, the negation of human agency. How is this possible? And more importantly, can modernity save us from itself? In order to find answers we will address modernity from the following thematic: what is the world-view both for the individual as such and as a member of a social world; how is the idea of modernity realised in history; and how can we proceed towards the future?
Contours of modernity and postmodernity What is modernity according to contemporary social theorists? In his well-known study Modernity and Self-Identity Anthony Giddens offers some interesting generalisations in the chapter called “The Contours of High Modernity”. Modernity according to Giddens was first established in post-feudal Europe, “but . . . in the twentieth century increasingly” became “world-historical” in its impact.5 Modernity refers to institutions and modes of behaviour. It is roughly equivalent to industrialism, capitalism, competitive markets, institutions of surveillance, massive increase of organisational power, the nation-state, symbolic tokens, and systems of expertise.6 Experts comprise among others the doctor, counsellor, therapist, technician, scientist and engineer. Trust is an important psychological state in modernity, because we have to have an almost implicit trust in the professional capabilities of these experts.7 The outward manifestations of modernity in institutions, expertise and strictly calculable time management have a deep impact on the
5 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 14–5. 6 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 14–6. 7 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 19. Trust is more than a minimal ethical demand in modernity. Fukuyama argues the importance of trust in different life situations at great length in his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York, 1995). He holds that moral virtues such as trust are the dynamics behind economic success and prosperity in any given society. Societies that lack trust and the related virtues are also economically and socially not well off. Fukuyama resurrects the famous Weber thesis about Protestantism but widens and secularises its application far beyond Protestantism itself.
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personal self. Confronted with modernity, a person has to explore and reconstruct the sense of self outside any traditionally given patterns. Traditional cultures organised transitions in the lives of individuals through rites de passage. These are no more valid under the sway of modernity. We are now, as it were, living in an unpredictable world in which every person has to find his or her own way in an impersonalised society.8 Thus from a psychological point of view, modernity for the individual person is accompanied by a high degree of what Giddens calls “anxiety” which is not to be confounded with fear. Anxiety “comes with human liberty”, while freedom “is not a given . . . but derives from the acquisition of an ontological understanding of external reality and personal identity”. Moreover, anxiety derives from the necessity “to anticipate future possibilities counterfactually in relation to present action”.9 Modernity, asserts Giddens, “confronts the individual with a complex diversity of choices and, because it is non-foundational, . . . offers little help as to which options should be selected”.10 One of the major concerns of Giddens’ analysis of modernity is the role of the individual person in it. Under modernity the individual has to grope for self-identity, make his or her own choices and is compelled to take risks in this process while not clinging to the security offered by “money, property, . . . personal relationship, marriage contracts”.11 To sum up, in Giddens’ contours of modernity we have on the societal scale: institutionalisation; expertise systems; the recombination of social relationships across indefinite time and space distances. On the scale of the individual we have: anxiety, insecurity, risk and infinite choice. Modernity in Giddens’ perception seems to be an interplay between individuals and institutions under the conditions outlined above. Only in passing does he refer to “the moral meaning of existence which modern institutions so thoroughly tend to dissolve” and which new “forms of religion and spirituality” are addressing.12 In his last chapter Giddens discusses emancipatory aspects of modernity. He distinguishes two types of politics: emancipatory
8 9 10 11 12
Giddens, Giddens, Giddens, Giddens, Giddens,
Modernity Modernity Modernity Modernity Modernity
and and and and and
Self-Identity, Self-Identity, Self-Identity, Self-Identity, Self-Identity,
pp. 32–3, 48. pp. 45–7. p. 80. p. 73. p. 207.
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politics and life politics. Emancipatory politics aim to free human beings from pre-existing constraints, through justice, equality and participation. Emancipation means liberating people from oppression. Such politics entail the “adoption of moral values”.13 It can be divided in three categories: radical (including Marxism), liberal and conservative. Life politics, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with the choices an individual or a group can make, once some degree of emancipation is achieved. Giddens’ analysis of modernity leaves us with an overall impression of totality, inescapability and irreversibility. Modernity equals the whole of our human condition since at least the last two hundred years. Giddens pays little attention to the moral issues of modernity in whatever form the latter appears to the individual. It is remarkable that Giddens advises us not to cling too much to security, not even in the most intimate personal facts of life such as marriage. Giddens analyses and represents the totally secular outlook of modernity at its height. In his Modernity and Ambivalence (1991) Zygmunt Bauman warns us that modernity “like all other quasi-totalities” is elusive, opaque and “frayed at the edges”. Yet around some prominent features of what he aptly calls “modern consciousness” he weaves his whole analysis of modernity. The spirit of modernity is obsessed with order against chaos, and with design against nature. Nature is “unordered existence”, this is something to be mastered, subordinated, remade. Existence “is modern in so far as it is effected and sustained by design, manipulation, management, engineering” (italics in the original). It is “administered by resourceful (that is, possessing knowledge, skill and technology), sovereign agencies”. This engineered and managed order has its “other” in the form of chaos, the things that have to be kept under control or kept out altogether. Bauman enumerates some of these things: “undefinability, incoherence, incongruity . . . irrationality, ambiguity, confusion, undecidability, ambivalence”. Moreover, modern consciousness is inclined to be utterly intolerant of this “other”. Modern consciousness “sets the limits to incorporation and admission”. It “calls for the denial of rights . . . of everything that cannot be assimilated”. Modernity sets itself an “impossible task”, a “horizon” that “can never be reached”. But this gives movement and illu-
13
Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 211–2.
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sory purpose to modernity’s “obsessive march forward”. Modernity thus “equals restlessness” appearing as “historical progress”. In order to “manage” the world, modernity prides itself on being able to “fragment” the world into precisely measurable units and territories. The fragments acquire the autonomy “to not look beyond the fence and not to be looked at from outside the fence”, and the “right to separate, to discriminate, to peel off and to trim”. This ability to dichotomise is “an exercise in power and at the same time its disguise”. The “other” of modernity, i.e. ambivalence, is “the waste of modernity” and “the modern era’s most genuine worry and concern, since . . . it grows in strength with every success of modern powers”.14 Modernity’s obsession with creating order and removing all ambivalence accounts in Bauman’s view as much for the Jacobinism of the French Revolution15 as for the Holocaust in Nazi Germany,16 and for communism and its demise.17 Bauman mentions in this context the twin concepts of social engineering (Bauman 1991:29) and the “gardening state” to explain this. In his opinion the modern state is like a garden in which desirable plants are to be fostered and undesirable ones must be weeded out.18 Thus the Holocaust was not the absence of modernity but initially its legitimate outcome. Bauman argues that social engineering and eugenics which lay at the foundation of the plan of the Holocaust, were widely accepted notions in pre-war Europe and the United States.19 Nazi Germany was simply implementing the principles of modernity with ruthless thoroughness. Ruthlessness follows almost inevitably from the obsession with manageable order: “the rationalizing drive of political agencies must seek liberation from “ethical constraints”.20 A similar liberation but in a somewhat different mode, characterises postmodernity. If modernity is about order, postmodernity is about “everything goes”.21 This mode of tolerance degenerates “into
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Zygmunt Bauman, Bauman, Bauman, Bauman, Bauman, Bauman, Bauman,
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 4–15. Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 27, 37. Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 29–30, 41–50. Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 266–8. Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 27–34. Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 30–36. Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 39. Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 251.
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selfishness of the rich and the resourceful”.22 In Bauman’s view, postmodernism as the newest fashion thrives on self-centredness and indifference to the condition of the non-privileged. This is possible because under postmodernity human concerns have become privatised; the “most seminal of privatizations was that of human problems and the responsibility for their resolution”. So instead of concerned citizens, in the postmodern world we are left with seduced and privileged consumers and those that have no means to consume. Obviously the latter owe their sorry state to themselves. Postmodernity “effectively desocialized the ills of society and translated social injustice as individual ineptitude or neglect”.23 Privatisation and consumerism create consumer-freedom for the rich. The driving force behind all this is the free market.24 Consumer freedom means orientation of life towards market-approved commodities and thereby precludes one crucial freedom: freedom from the market . . . Above all consumer freedom succesfully deflects aspirations of human liberty from communal affairs and the management of collective life.25
Irresponsibility, free market, and a minimised state are driven by what Bauman calls postmodern values: “novelty, . . . rapid (preferably inconsequential and episodic) change, . . . individual enjoyment and consumer choice”.26 These sum up the postmodern condition as the opposite and the collapse of the order and regularisation of modernity. Postmodernity, Bauman exclaims elsewhere, “is modernity without illusions”. Illusions are the “belief that the “messiness” of the human world is but a temporary and repairable state, sooner or later to be replaced by the orderly and systematic rule of reason”. Postmodernity mistrusts “unemotional, calculating reason” and returns dignity to “human spontaneity”, “drives, impulses and inclinations
22
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 259. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 261. 24 If this is social postmodernity, we seem to have gone back to the nineteenth century “laissez faire” liberalism. The latter also blamed the poor for their poverty. Postmodernity may in fact be nothing more than a revival of harsh elitist liberalism under a new cloak. If this view is accepted, under postmodernity we are moving away from emancipatory modernity not in a forward but an obviously backward direction. 25 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 262. 26 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 278. 23
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resistant to prediction and rational justification”.27 The predominant note of postmodernist social theory is that large encompassing “metanarratives” including “religion, science, art, modernism and Marxism”, making “absolute universal and all-embracing claims to knowledge and truth” have lost validity and legitimacy.28 Especially “the metanarrative of Marxism and its claim to absolute truth, as . . . any theory which tries to read a pattern of progress into history” have become particularly suspect to postmodernists.29 It seems as if postmodernity is based on despair and total lack of faith. “We have sold our souls to idealism and see how horribly we have been betrayed all these decades!”. This seems to be the disappointment of the condition of postmodernity. The general contours of the mentality of modernity are: rejection of the past, irreversible change in all spheres of life, imposing rational control over a world that is seen as chaotic and irrational, increasing reliance on technological inventions, free market economy, and very little ethics. Postmodernity then is just the slackening of government control, privatisation of social life and a consequent growing divide between rich consumers and those that were too stupid or lazy to “make it”. Giddens does not discuss ethical concerns. Bauman does, but despairs of both modernity and postmodernity. However, both Giddens and Bauman implicitly treat modernity as a mentality, rather than external institutions.
Modernity and eurocentrism Anthony King in an insightful essay shows that in contemporary social theory modernity is “invariably defined only in relation to Europe and the USA, and not within the worldsystem as a whole”. Modernity is often solely identified with the European “Enlightenment project” emphasising “rationality, order, the state, control and the
27
Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, pp. 32–3. Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (London and New York, 1995), p. 227. See also the deliciously irreverent collection of essays on postmodernism and ethics by Ron Shapiro, Surviving Postmodernism: Some Ethical and not so Ethical Debates in the Media and Universities (Delhi, 1998). 29 Strinati, An Introduction, p. 227. 28
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belief in progress”.30 This Eurocentrism is an obvious shortcoming. It is the direct consequence of “defining the modern . . . by reference to a particular point in time, but without reference to space”.31 King proposes to define modernity at least by taking a very recent point in time as the moment of its departure. Such a recent vantage point will allow us to view modernity as the multicultural mixture that one can experience in large cities like “Rio, Calcutta or Mombasa”.32 King further argues that even postmodernity characterised by “irony, pastiche, the mixing of different histories, intertextuality . . . fragmentation, incoherence . . .” is a Eurocentric concept. These characteristics existed “decades, if not centuries” before in “colonial societies . . . in Calcutta, Hong Kong, Rio or Singapore”.33 Only recently, “Third World intellectuals in the humanities” have brought a “new consciousness of colonialism” to Western debates. Modernity and postmodernity stand in need of deep redefinition in the light of a view that is gradually ridding itself of its Eurocentric shackles. The space thus opened up allows us to see modernity not as a “Great Unifier” or a single route to progress, but rather, in the words of Therborn, as a “terrain”, a “cultural landscape” through which different “routes and trajectories” pass. He distinguishes four “major entries into modernity”, the European one of revolution or reform; the New World route of the Americans; imposed or externally induced modernity as in Egypt or the Ottoman Empire; and lastly the route of colonial conquest and subjection. Especially the fourth route is ridden with conflict. Modernity under colonialism was a foreign element that had to be absorbed and assimilated. National emancipation and national identity have been “of enduring significance” also in the post-colonial era. The challenge for future study of modernity is to “de-Westernize” and “de-centre” the “conception of the global, to grasp the diversity of the modern world”.34 Although it
30 Anthony D. King, “The Times and Spaces of Modernity (or who needs postmodernism?)” in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities (London and New Delhi, 1995), p. 110. 31 King, “The Times and Spaces”, p. 111. 32 King, “The Times and Spaces”, p. 114. 33 King, “The Times and Spaces”, pp. 120–1. 34 Göran Therborn, “Route to/through Modernity”, in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities (London and New Delhi, 1995), pp. 131–7.
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is difficult to deny the validity of the demand to “de-Westernise” modernity, from an historical perspective it is also difficult to altogether deny the Western birthplace of modernity. Perhaps one single factor—irrespective of the origins—accounts for modernity as the most pervasive phenomenon of our contemporary world: it can be succesfully repeated and with every repetition there is added value of various kinds. Modernity is a mode of individual and societal behaviour that can be learned, imitated and adapted to local needs. The imitating and learning aspect of adopting modernity, or of becoming modern, suggests the imitators are obliged to follow the Western master model. In other words, if one wants to become modern, one has to imitate the role model, the “perfect original”, from Europe of course. However, the other aspect is adaptation and learning through adaptation and experimenting. Adaptation and experimentation with modernity imply that modernity is not a single blueprint that can be mechanically copied. Wherever that happened it failed. The process of modernity is comparable to the spread of technology, industrialisation and economic growth. Ernest Gellner regards the promise of economic growth as the hallmark of modern society. Industrialisation dissolved traditional agrarian society. This in its turn caused new mobility and a “certain kind of egalitarianism”. Hence modern society “has to be mobile . . . because this is required for the satisfaction of its terrible and overwhelming thirst for economic growth”.35 Economic growth is setting an example for the rest of the world to emulate if it so wishes: “great stories of successful economic development were about societies whose wealth and power had the demonstration effect which pointed humanity towards a new style of life”.36 With every new experimentation, new improvements are made and the whole body of technological knowledge is being enriched. Modernity can be likened to a process of learning and improvement. The fact that modernity is open-ended and can be learned, explains its success. Like technology, modernity is both a motivating power and a body of ever-increasing expert knowledge which are applied to social life. It need not necessarily follow only one single trajectory.
35 36
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p. 25. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p. 86.
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Modernity and ethics
It is noteworthy that the social theorists we have so far discussed completely left ethics and values out of their analysis of modernity. Only Bauman returns to moral issues regarding the implementation of modernity, but stops short of calling the thing by its name. His Modernity and Ambivalence is permeated with the idea that modernity can and does lead to the entire absence of any ethical considerations. If modernity means order, then everything that does not fit in the pattern must be ruthlessly eradicated. The worst example of this is the Holocaust. The terms “moral”, “ethics”, “values” appear on the same page and are used indiscriminately.37 The same page tells us that modern scientists “hail objectivity” and “disdain and avoid value judgements”, while “science itself ” is “objective and hence immune to ethical recrimination: not a moral problem at all”. In the following statement we find Bauman’s understanding of modernity and morality neatly summarised: “by radically weakening the hold of moral inhibitions, and making large-scale actions independent from moral judgement . . . and individual morality, modernity supplies the means for genocide”.38 And for colonialism, we may add.39 Among the other authors, Anthony Giddens devotes a few sentences to morality in his book-long essay Modernity and Self-Identity. The most explicit reference to anything that may vaguely look like a moral concern is found in his juxtaposition of emancipatory and life politics. Emancipatory politics used to aim at the “reduction or elimination of exploitation, inequality or oppression”. The corresponding form in life politics aims at the “creation of morally justifiable forms of life that will promote self-actualisation in the context of global interdependence”.40 Giddens and Bauman base their observations on the unquestioned assumption that modernity equals a purely secular outlook which ignores ethical concerns, let alone religious inspirations. But not all social scientists on modernity are totally unconcerned about ethics.
37 38 39 40
Cf. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 49–50. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 49–50. Bauman expressed a sincere concern for ethics (Bauman, Postmodern Ethics). Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 215.
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Cultural Studies For an ethical perspective on modernity, which also takes note of individual persons, we can turn to a recent new discipline, Cultural Studies. Emerging from the study of English literature, sociology of culture and committed British socialism in the sixties, Cultural Studies brings us closer to the lives of human beings and their daily concerns. Some of its practitioners claimed that Cultural Studies is “of course, the study of culture, or, more particularly, the study of contemporary culture”. Cultural Studies concentrate on “subjectivity, which means that it studies culture in relation to individual lives, breaking with social scientific positivism”.41 But this approach roams about in the realms of history and ethics as well. Values do play a role in the motivation behind doing Cultural Studies. Fred Inglis in his overview of Cultural Studies claims his book “is . . . a mixture of secular sermon, intellectual pilgrimage . . . and . . . strenuous aspiration towards entirely serious and syncretic thoughts”.42 Protagonists of Cultural Studies bear witness to values that include “democracy, equality, fulfilment, freedom”. These values are “trans-class and selfless”. They are “our common heritage and the ground in which our common humanity is rooted”. They “affirm solidarity as against competition”.43 Inglis wants Cultural Studies “militants” to practice three special virtues: “keenness of spontaneity”, “earnest serenity of seriousness” and “solidarity”. The political inspiration behind this solidarity and behind Cultural Studies as a whole Inglis records on the same page: Solidarity is the first value of socialism and although socialism is in pretty bad cas . . . Cultural Studies started from socialism’s old parabolas, its spirals of love and hope as well as of hatred and vengefulness. The political commitment is inscribed in the values and conceptual structures of all descriptions of the field, and any revisions will have to keep faith with that solidarity, its realm and fount of value, or else ditch the whole project and begin again.44
As an intellectual inquiry “in all the mansions of the . . . human sciences”, cultural studies should try to “balance the claims of life in 41 42 43 44
Simon During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader (London, 1993), p. 1. Fred Inglis, Cultural Studies (Oxford, 1993), p. xiii. Inglis, Cultural Studies, p. 9. Inglis, Cultural Studies, p. 17.
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the here-and-now against a larger objectivity”. Or “in the language of morality”, studying the human sciences should give us “a way of thinking and a speakable idiom” to “tell us an intelligible story about history . . . and how we may live . . . principled lives in it”.45 We may disagree with Inglis’ claim that socialist solidarity as a moral and political commitment “is inscribed” in “all descriptions of the field” of Cultural Studies. Socialist inspiration is often not very noticeable in the recent developments of Cultural Studies. But let us take his word for it that Cultural Studies as a multidisciplinary inquiry into contemporary culture and into modernity itself, should be informed with more positive emotion than mere academic detachment. How one should analyse culture in a humanistic fashion we learn through Cultural Studies in practice. The socialist inspiration behind it is sympathetic, but can we find more than observation of daily life? Assuming that the study of modernity is to some extent the study of human progress and self-realisation, we should be able to discover historical moments when most dramatically human beings have been inspired to transcend themselves on the basis of a particular liberating ethic. Socialism was one such a source of inspiration. Struggles against oppression of whatever kind is another case in point. They are the strongest moments of modernity, as we will show in the sequel. Resistance against oppression (whether of tradition or monarchy or a church) often coincided with cultural and political emancipation. The most prominent Western examples of this are the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and the various cultural and political revolutions it engendered, from the establishment of the Geneva Republic, the Dutch Republic, the Cromwellian Revolution in England, up to the American Revolution, and the French Revolutions. In all of these Calvinism played an important role.46 The Russian Revolution and the other twentieth-century revolutions owe almost nothing to the spirit of Protestantism anymore. They were all inspired by a secular sense of political and social freedom. Twentiethcentury revolutions were mostly guided by Marxist activists. Marxism in the colonies was a strong force towards radical political emanci-
45
Inglis, Cultural Studies, p. 8. On the political revolutionary aspect of Calvinism, see the massive study by John Sap, Paving the Way for Revolution: Calvinism and the Struggle for a Democratic Constitutional State (Amsterdam, 2001). 46
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pation. Among the revolutionary decolonisation movements, the Indian Freedom Movement figures prominently. In most cases anticolonial resistance meant conflict and (armed) struggle in which there were winners and losers. Marxism with its analysis of the political economy of capitalism provided a credible diagnosis of the ills under colonial rule. Hence it was followed by many serious anticolonial freedom fighters, even though they later in life often again turned away from Marxism.47
Radical emancipatory modernity Digging in the recent past of modernity shows many roads to greater liberty and justice such as the well-known ones of liberalism, nationalism, and socialism. What all these utopias have in common is the idea and possibility of full human self-realisation and emancipation. But there are other less well-known utopias of modernity too: anarchism, Gandhism, christian-democracy, libertarianism and even anarcho-capitalism. However, not all utopias belong to the core of the moral ethos of modernity. All brands of religiously inspired fundamentalism and revivalism (Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic and Christian) are utopias, but not modes of modernity. Nor are fascism, nazism and other forms of authoritarianism. All utopias that completely reject the main ideals of greater self-realisation and social justice and liberty must be excluded from the core of modernity. This exclusion is based on a clear recognition that the essence of modernity is an ethical concern, not an governmental instrument. The real utopias of modernity may differ in emphasis: some emphasise economic reform, some social responsibility, some again advocate a strong welfare state, some want power structures to disappear and advocate voluntary association and co-operation, some value personal freedom more than anything else. But all these truly modern utopias share a concern for the future: to change the present for a better future. They are all based on some confidence in the effectiveness of human agency. Above all, they are informed (or ideally ought to be informed) by a deeply felt ethic of unselfishness. 47 See on this the enlightening introduction by Sibnarayan Ray to the edited writings of the Indian Freedom fighter and Marxist communist M.N. Roy: Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Selected Works of M.N. Roy, Vol. 1 (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 1–56.
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After the fall of the Berlin Wall Fukuyama’s “End of History” has not arrived yet, nor has Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” begun beyond the usual clashes of commercial and geo-strategic interests of the West versus the rest. What we do witness is a steep rise in authoritarian politics, ranging from extremely violent manifestations of Islamic fundamentalism, to equally violent Hindu revivalism, the come-back of the extreme right in Europe and the coercive policies of US-led globalisation. But this rise in extremist politics does not indicate a clash of civilisations, rather a clash of authoritarian (national) interests. Nevertheless, one should make no mistakes about the dangers they are posing for modernity, democracy and human rights. There is apparently little cause for idealism these days. Marxism seems to have outlived itself after numerous metamorphoses: from the Workers’ International and nascent social-democracy in the late nineteenth century, via Leninist-Stalinist adaptations to vaguely postmodernist political correctness. Thus for our idealism we are left with the tradition of radical liberty and social justice (which moved around the fringes of Marxist orthodoxy) has never fully allied itself with authoritarian forms of government.48 Perhaps from this radical perspective it is possible to analyse and theorise idealistic but viable utopias of modernity. We could call this radical emancipatory modernity. The central issue here is the difference between a modernity that is truly emancipatory and all the other socio-political utopias that end in authoritarianism, because they were based on control and a purely instrumental governmental view of human beings that make up society. The other problem is that the authoritarian mindset inherited from pre-Enlightenment, feudal times, were never fully shaken off. It is precisely because of their authoritarianism that many utopias of modernity have come in for severe criticism and were rightfully rejected. Authoritarianism and not abstract economics is the sickness of contemporary political utopias. Thus radical emancipatory concerns could be regarded as the core and ideal of modernity for the future. One of
48 During the Civil War in Spain, around 1936, the anarchists, who were a force to be reckoned with, joined the governments of Catalonia and Madrid. The anarchist ministers were drawn from the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica. See George Woodcock, Anarchism (Harmondsworth Middlesex, 1977), pp. 368–70.
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its most important global manifestations nowadays is the deep concern for human rights. Is radical emancipatory modernity only a typically Western concern?
Modernity, colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism Many scholars have maintained that modernity—being Western in origin—has travelled outside the West among others via colonialism. In whatever way it came to the “non-West”, modernity was always an imposition. Colonialism best exemplifies the inequality involved in the process: the giver imposes, the recipient obediently accepts, modernity. Of course, we cannot separate colonialism from the colonialists, those who created colonial settings. These people were of two kinds: European conquerors, merchants, missionaries, civil servants, soldiers, teachers, scholars; and their indigenous helpers: local elites, clerks, urban middle classes, indigenous merchants, policemen, landlords, translators, village headmen. In the friction between all these groups, colonial and indigenous modernities arose. According to Edward Said, colonial empire was about “the interdependence of cultural terrains in which colonizer and colonized . . . battled each other through projections as well as rival . . . narratives, and histories”. Now the time has come to study imperialism as “neither monolithic nor reductively compartmentalized”. The struggles to “be free from empire . . . prove the validity of a fundamental liberationist energy that animates the wish to be independent”.49 It is this liberationist energy that forms the core of modernity also outside Europe. It is the same concern that inspires all genuine attempts at greater liberty and self-realisation. This concern is in the last analysis a spiritual and ethical one, inasmuch as it does not seek self-realisation for the personal self only but for humanity as a whole. The “wish to be independent” animates struggles to become free. On societal scale this wish translates into struggle for cultural and political independence, in other words, into anti-colonial nationalism. Nationalism in general is widely understood as the most important bearer of modernity especially of the type Bauman so eloquently denounces. In the words of Gellner,
49
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London, 1994), pp. xxii–iii.
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nationalism is, essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previously low cultures had taken up the lives . . . of the population. It means that generalized diffusion of a school-mediated, academy-supervised idiom, codified for the requirements of reasonably precise bureaucratic and technological communication. It is the establishment of an anonymous, impersonal society, with mutually substitutable atomized individuals, held together . . . by a shared culture of this kind . . .50
Modern education and shared high culture are stimulated by one great motive force, the motive force of modernity par excellence, modern rationalised industrialism, because it is modern industrial society alone that requires for its smooth functioning “universal literacy and a high level of numerical, technical and general sophistication”.51 Gellner’s important contribution to the investigation of the origins and quasi omnipresence of nationalism in the modern world (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), is the fact that he convincingly demonstrates the necessary links between industrialisation and nationalism. For it is modern calculating and rational industrialisation especially which needs for its full blossoming compact, culturally homogeneous territorial nation-states.52 Gellner is, however, mainly thinking of Europe as the role model for the rest of the world. In colonial empires the function of indigenous nationalism is somewhat different. But it has motivated liberation-movements and struggles for freedom. In this respect only, nationalism is a form of emancipatory modernity.53
Contours of Indian modernity In the last two decades, Indian social historians have produced exciting new interpretations of Indian anti-colonial nationalism.54 The two
50
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p. 57. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p. 35. 52 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 39–42. 53 Even nowadays, as Ranajit Guha, the founder of Subaltern Studies, remarked once in an interview when he said that he called himself an “Indian leftist, antiimperialist and anti-colonial nationalist”. 54 See especially Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, A Derivative Discourse. (London, 1993); Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Imaginary Institution of India”, in Subaltern Studies, Vol. 7 (New Delhi, 1993), pp. 1–39; Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal (New Delhi, 1988); 51
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monographs by Partha Chatterjee have been especially influential.55 The main point Chatterjee argues in these books is that the ThirdWorld nationalism—of which nascent Indian nationalism forms an integral part—is characterised by constructing new cultural identities as a response to the European enterprise of colonisation. In his first book, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, published in 1986, Chatterjee maintains that such anti-colonial . . . nationalism sought to demonstrate the falsity of the colonial claim that the backward peoples were culturally incapable of ruling themselves in the conditions of the modern world. . . . it also asserted that a backward nation could “modernize” itself while retaining its cultural identity. . . . even as it challenged the colonial claim to political domination, it also accepted the . . . premises of “modernity” on which colonial domination was based.56
Chatterjee does not offer an unambiguous definition of nationalism. As nationalism’s dominant note in the nineteenth century was anticolonialism manifesting itself in a great variety of cultural, historical and political texts written initially predominantly by Bengali intellectuals, we must assume that a definition encompasses all these productions. Since a definition cannot run into endlessness, Chatterjee characterises nationalism minimally by its common denominator as anti-colonialism. This minimal requirement lands us in trouble, for it does not make explicit the need to modernise Indian society from within without the interference of the colonial overlords. Most of the prominent nineteenth-century nationalist icons were in fact also modernisers and socio-political reformers. Also in this second monograph Chatterjee does not clearly define nationalism in a short formula but rather intends the whole book to define the nation to be by presenting a mosaic of its bits and pieces. That the nation (and what about nationalism?) is difficult to define, Chatterjee admits from the start. In his preface he calls the “nation . . . the one most untheorized concept of the modern world”.57
Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self (New Delhi, 1994). The first two authors are prominent exponents of the Subaltern Studies approach to the writing of Indian history. 55 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought; and Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, New Jersey, 1993). 56 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought, p. 30. 57 Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, p. xi.
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By way of a working hypothesis Chatterjee agrees with Benedict Anderson’s famous theory of the “imagined” quality of the nation. In his famous monograph on nationalism Benedict Anderson proposes the following definition of the nation: “it is an imagined community . . . because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members”.58 This imagination of the nation was spread through printed books and newspapers written in the “national” language of a given region. The production of all this printed material Anderson calls “print-capitalism”. Or to put Anderson’s thesis more briefly: the mass-media create the image of the nation in the minds of the consumers of these mass-media. And all this, Anderson shows us, began to happen since the printing-press was invented in the fifteenth century.59 The place where the Indian nation is constructed Chatterjee locates in the spiritual domain: The material is the domain of the “outside”, of the economy and of state-craft, of science and technology, a domain where the West had proved its superiority and the East had succumbed . . . The spiritual . . . is an “inner” domain bearing the “essential” marks of cultural identity . . . The colonial state . . . is kept out of the “inner” domain of national culture . . . here nationalism launches its most powerful, creative . . . historically significant project: to fashion a “modern” national culture that is . . . not Western. If the nation is an imagined community, then this is where it is brought into being.60
In other words, Chatterjee embraces Anderson’s assumption that the nation resides in the consciousness of the members that form the national community. The most powerful form of nationalism, the ideology of the nation, is the indigenous culture moving within the “inner” domain of cultural production. This is the locus of the formulation and dissemination of non-Western modes of modernity. Thus the nascent Indian nation, also in Chatterjee’s view, is a modern phenomenon. But Chatterjee does not delve much further into the content of the ideology of Indian modernity, least of all in its revolutionary manifestations around the beginning of the twentieth century well down into the early forties.
58 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York, 1993), p. 6. 59 Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 37–42. 60 Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, p. 6.
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If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain “modular” forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine? History, it would seem, has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual consumers of modernity. Europe and the Americas . . . have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation, but also that of our anticolonial resistance and postcolonial misery. Even our imaginations must remain forever colonized.61
Part of the problem Chatterjee points to, can be solved by being more specific about what “Europe (and by extension the Americas)” stand for: a homogenisation of Europe seems as much an “orientalist” trap as orientalising the “East”. Chatterjee feels uneasy about Europe as coloniser and the emancipatory discourses that also, but not solely, originated from Europe. The cultural fields inhabited, for instance, by Lord Cornwallis and the poet Shelley are totally different: the former an ambitious imperialist and royalist, the latter a republican and an advocate of atheism and anarchism. Still, both are nearcontemporaries and hail from Europe but there the similarity ends. Furthermore, politically progressive European influences on nineteenth-century Bengali intellectuals cannot simply be ignored on the grounds of anti-colonial difference. Chatterjee’s thematic can perhaps be restated thus: what do non-European emancipatory modernities look like? Whether they existed or not is not in question. But the inner space they had occupied deserves more precise charting and the activism that sprang out of this inner space may be taken a little more seriously.62 In a later work, A Possible India, Chatterjee argues at some length the existence of multiple modernities. They are characterised by their difference from the Western master modernity. It is the “cultural project of nationalism” to “produce a distinctly national modernity”. Modernity came to India as a double-faced gift from the colonising West. Modernity imposed as “foreign rule was [deemed] necessary”, because “Indians must first become enlightened” in the Western sense
61
Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, p. 5. It is remarkable that there is a wealth of literature on for instance Gandhi and Nehru, to which the Subalterns headed by Partha Chatterjee also contributed; but almost nothing serious on a Bhagat Singh, a Chandrashekhar Azad, or even Madame Bhikhaiji Rustomji Cama. Perhaps the Freedom Struggle is still too close in time to allow a more historically balanced and less hagiographical approach. 62
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of the word. The “same logic of modernity . . . led . . . to the discovery that imperialism was illegitimate”. Modernity entailed both the “burden of reason” and “desire for power”, as well as “dreams of freedom” and the “resistance to power”. A sense of attachment to the past determines the colour of Indian modernity; the desire to be modern makes the Indians transpose their “desire to be independent and creative” on to their past. In spite of its desire for power and control, modernity also is “the first social philosophy which conjures up, in the minds of the most ordinary people, dreams of independence and self-rule”. Modernity leads to “the desire for autonomy” and consequently to resistance of power. In the end, Chatterjee asserts, there are “two intellectual arenas of modernity”: a Western one “claiming to be the universal” and “the national aspiring to be different”.63 One could seriously question this Western “universal” claim. Claims to universality were made by most world religions, not in the least Indian Buddhism and Hinduism which travelled over the whole of East Asia and comfortably settled there. It is up to sensitive Indian intellectuals to show the universality of Indian cultural productions of the past and the present. Indian indigenous modernity emerging in the early nineteenth century, was itself by no means a homogeneous phenomenon. The space of Indian modernity was filled with a number of adjacent plots (of difference): Hindu religious reforms, Indian philosophy of modernity, cultural nationalism, Indian linguistics and history-writing, modern vernacular literature, experiments with national education, Indian print-capitalism, building of Indian organisations. Within and between these plots influential Indian writers and theorists moved about. Their writings told the story of Indian modernness, the new cultural and religious ideals Indians were supposed to adopt, the stories and symbols by which Indians could imagine the Indian nation in the making, and finally the possible roads to resist the empire. Around the beginning of the twentieth century these stories of modernity and Indian nation-hood transformed some sensitive Indians into hardened fighters for national freedom.64 They showed how to assert control over one’s own national destiny. The most radical ones among 63 Partha Chatterjee, A Possible India: Essays in Political Criticism (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 279–85. 64 Once more we should emphasise here the relative historiographical neglect of the militant aspects of the Freedom Struggle.
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them strove for total separation from the British Empire. The believed in and worked for emancipation not only from British tutelage, but also struggled for the upliftment of the Indian population from the oppressions of the past. The major protagonists of this radical antiimperial nationalism regarded themselves as modernisers and educators. The sought to inculcate a sense of self-worth and capability for improvement in the minds of the Indian public. It is in the writings and acts of self-sacrifice of these freedom fighters that we ought to look for the contours and ideals of Indian emancipatory modernity, a modernity that is yet unrealised. In other words, we are looking at the group of nationalists that after the split in the Congress at Surat in 1908 were designated as “extremists”. We should not fully agree with Chatterjee’s pessimism about Indians being “perpetual consumers” of a modernity that is actually of Western origin. The Indian freedom movement offers many examples of where Indians were not consumers of Western modernity but creators of indigenous modernity. What should worry us at this juncture is the weakness or wholesale retreat of modernity and the return of ancient régime authoritarianisms in a new garb. At present this seems to be a worldwide process. In South Asia it manifests itself primarily in Hindu rightist extremism in India and Islamist radicalism in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Hindu and the Islamic extreme right mirror each other. They have much in common, but at the same time are at each others’ throats. The first victims of these elitist bully movements are the economically weakest sections of society. The higher echelons of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi society will be cowed into submission with the passage of time, or so runs the expectation of the rightist extremists. The rise and apparent success of the extreme right in South Asia is a poisonous hangover from the colonial era. The mentality of rule without the need for popular support or consent characterised the British Raj.65 This semi-feudal mentality has lingered on as a ready-made elitist model to follow in perpetuity. The future of South Asian modernity depends on the continuous struggle against these authoritarian tendencies. Indian modernity needs to be fostered and protected at all cost.
65 See the penetrating analysis of colonial governance by Ranajit Guha in Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (New Delhi, 1998).
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MODERN MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE IN INDIA AND EUROPE: TOWARDS AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE Jan Brouwer
Introduction1 The on-going “information revolution” is supposed to have an impact on social change. Rather like its preceding technological revolutions it can be said to have an impact on the practical level of the livedin order. All these revolutions were the result of a cognitive revolution which is commonly known as the Enlightenment in Europe. This first revolution was announced, so as to speak, by the Italian Humanist Alberti in 1435 AD with the publication of his De Pictura or Theory of Perspective.2 With increasingly shorter intervals, it was followed by numerous technological innovations till the decade 1904–1914.3
1 The references to the arts could never have been made without the deep insights of my teacher for the History of Art, Dr Mrs O.L. Bouma of The Hague. I am greatly indebted to her. I also wish to thank Prof. Philppe Ramirez (CNRS, Paris) for comments on an earlier draft. The usual disclaimers apply. 2 The humanist Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1475) wrote De Pictura in Latin in 1435 and the architect Filippo Brunellesco (also Brunelleschi) translated this into Italian as Della Pittura in 1436. Alberti wrote: “The painter should paint only those objects/subjects that can be seen by means of Light. He has to represent these as if he looks out of an open window ( finestra aperta).” It was Leonardo da Vinci who later replaced this concept by that of the “glass wall”. 3 The first printing presses appeared in Europe in Strasbourg (1458), in Cologne (1465), in Rome (1467), in Barcelona and Pilsen (1468), in Utrecht and Venice (1469), in London (1476). Copernicus’ theory camera obscura (1501); Dutch windmills (1550); Galileo Galilei (1564); Johannes Bayer, first atlas of the stars (1603); Kepler astonomia nova (1609); Chr. Huygens, light waves (1629); Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, observatory at Leiden (1632); R. Boyle, chemical elements (1661); Hermann Boerhaave “The physician is the servant of Nature” (1736); James Watt, steam engine (1736); Celsius, thermometer (1742); Duchene du Boulogne, electro therapy (1748); Ampere (1820); Mendeleyev, periodic system of elements (1869); Darwin (1871); Diesel (1893). Pablo Picasso’s path breaking work “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907) was not “abstract” but cubic that is the five ladies together seen from a multitude of viewpoints within a single frame. Piet Mondriaan was the first radically abstract painter with his work “Composition” (1913).
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During this decade, the Arts—notably painting and music—made a second announcement of breaking open established views. This was followed independently by the discovery of the atom as a miniconstellation. The process of breaking down continued and even smaller particles than the atom were discovered and smaller units than the second became necessary for time reckoning. It may be argued that this second announcement is also one of the order of a cognitive revolution upsetting hitherto established conceptions of Time and Space. The information revolution seems to be of the cognitive order with an impact on prevailing concepts of Time and Space. It is extremely doubtful whether television and its programmes have an impact that is on the cognitive level. Therefore, I agree with John Fiske who said that it does not have an “effect” on people. Television does not have an “impact” or “effect”: it has “effectivity”, because “it does work ideologically to promote and to prefer certain meanings of the world, to circulate some meanings rather than others, and to serve some social interests better than others”.4 Its socioideological effectivity is shown by Michaels who observed that Australian “Aboriginal viewers of Rambo found neither pleasure nor sense in his nationalistic, patriotic motivation. Instead, they “wrote” him into an elaborate kinship network with those he was rescuing, thus making “tribal” meanings that were culturally pertinent to themselves.”5 This paper is not a research based study. Rather it is an idea provoked by the still prevalent ideas that a farmer in Peru is the same as a farmer in India and that television and internet have an impact if not the same impact in India and in Europe. Twenty years before the computer revolution and thirty years before the internet Marshall McLuhan (2001) coined the phrases “global village” and “the medium is the message”.6 McLuhan’s fate resembles that of all prophets. People laughed at his ideas, but slowly began to use them to the extend of ignoring the cultural dimensions of the problem. Here I wish to explore the location and the level of effectivity of two types of modern media. I shall try to view television as a means of mass communication and the internet as a means of individual communication from the vantage point of Indigenous Knowledge.
4 5 6
J. Fiske, Television Culture (London, 1993), p. 20. Michaels, “Aborginal Content”, quoted in Fiske, Television, p. 316. M. McLuhan, Understanding Media (London, 2001).
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The general public, the academic communities and the corporate sectors are now well aware of the success of internet/email and software development in India. Many companies now recruit Indian software engineers for work in Europe. The question is why the Indians were so fast and the Europeans so slow in engaging themselves in this sector.7 In other words what is the effectivity of the new media? As I see it, the advent of television and internet make for a new cognitive revolution. I will suggest that television is effective in the field of life-style but not on world-view and that the internet technology is effective as means to reinforce indigenous categories. I will do so by focusing on views on observation, Nature and the person, and perceptions of society and modes of communication. What makes the modern media as systems of communication different from the conventional modes of communication is their unilaterality. It is in this abstraction that social control and power are located. Therefore a few words on the location of power are required. First a brief description of the three Indian traditions from the vantage point of the concepts of power and authority. It shows that in India the Scriptural Tradition and the Traditional Practices share notions of power, authority and communication. Together these two traditions distinguish themselves from similar notions of the Modern State. It is followed by a few words on the concepts of power and authority in India as their location in the subcontinent is different from that in Europe. Television is a means of communication that belongs to the Modern State. In India, the majority of audience with which it pretends to interact belongs to a society which views and perceptions (rather its sign systems) are significantly different from those on which the Modern State is based. Hence, the statement that the impact/effect of television on social change has to be qualified in terms of concepts and practices and the research questions regarding the effectivity of television in India has to be reformulated. The Modern State actively encourages the internet, e-mail and software development. In India the governments’s hope is now pinned on “e-governance”. The arguments are clear: speed, removal of
7 There is, of course, on the empirical level also a demographic dimension in this. Here I focus on the cognitive level.
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human inefficiency, outreach. What is far less clear is its effectivity on the Modern State itself, the other Indian traditions and society.
Three Indian traditions For the past 200 years, India houses three main traditions. Paraphrasing Heesterman (1985), the Scriptural Tradition is not directed towards continuity, but towards discontinuity of established social links.8 The theoretical norm of strictly separated var»as implies individualisation and categorisation. The ideal life is placed outside the world, for the pure individual (without any link with others) cannot survive. This theory is characterised by (i) separation of basic units; (ii) roughly defined categories; and (iii) lack of interdependence, which is replaced by individualisation. There is thus an unbridgeable gap between the ideal placed outside the world and the reality of the social world. The theoretical concept of var»a represents the norm for the reality concept of jàti. The scriptural theory provides the legitimating idiom of the second Indian tradition, namely, the Traditional Practices. The sociological category of var»a is independent and its members are individuals without social relationships. It serves as a point of reference for the jàti concept that is recognized by collectivity (groups), direct relationships (between groups and individuals), reciprocity (as a system to maintain relationships), and interaction (one’s position is defined on the basis of mutual relationships). This traditional order is based on networks of face-to-face communities. It is an interdependent, particularistic society legitimized by the var»a theory. India’s third tradition, the Modern State, breaks up society into basic, independent units according to grids which means segregation. By itself this furthers separation and reinforcement of the units, such as caste, language, religion, region, and village. Secondly, the Modern State works with finely defined categories, which appear as independent, complete units, such as the individual, the party, the city, the district, the nation. Thirdly, the Modern State’s unity consists of a fairly indirect system of relationships between these units. Fourthly,
8 J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society (Chicago, 1985).
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people are impersonalised and viewed as mutually interchangeable entities. Fifthly, the political unity of the Modern State is based on a collective responsibility—the constitutional democracy, which authorizes a single, sovereign power the monopoly of the use of violence and the collection of taxes, centrally and directly. Thus, the key concepts of the Modern State are categories, separation of categories, and the impersonalised individual. In the State, the power and means are concentrated. It tries to be independent of society. Politics and the political system is perceived as a separate domain of activity. In the Modern State, power and authority are combined. For example, we speak of the local authorities to exercise their power to implement policies.
Power and authority The location of power and its relationship to authority is different in Europe and India. Within India the two concepts are perceived differently by Hindus and Muslims. When the Pope visited India, he was received by the Government as the Head of Vatican State. The Pope who is the Head of the Roman-Catholic Church is thus also a Head of State. As Head of the Church he represents authority and as Head of State he represents worldly power. The Head of State of Andorra is alternately the President of France and a Bishop of Spain. In other words, in European culture power and authority are not mutual exclusive concepts. They can be combined in one institution. In Indian culture it is unthinkable that the Head of a ma†ha is also the Head of State. The Head of a ma†ha represents authority or more precisely, is an exemplar of transcendent authority. He is the ideal type of emancipation. The Head of State (the king) represents the world of interdependence and exchange. In other words, in the Indian Indigenous Knowledge System, royal power and brahmanic authority belong to two distinct domains. In the world, there are thousands of actually functionary groups to which one belongs by birth. These groups are the jàtis. The jàtis are interdependent, and collaborate with each other. It is these connections that the var»a theory proposes to eliminate by disconnecting status from power. This leads to the brahman being acknowledged
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as the highest and purest because of absence of power and his autonomy. Ideally he does not have provisions for the next day.9
A second cognitive revolution The concepts of power and authority have remained connected in Europe during the past 400 years. In India, they have remained separated during the same period. In both the subcontinental cultures the location and position of these concepts have not been effected by the numerous changes in the actual situations including the different modes of communication. Between 1435 and 1904, the conception of relationship between Nature and Culture changed from a holistic one to one of separation, so that Culture can study Nature.10 The concept of the person viewed as comprising more “selves” changed into a unitary concept: one person is one “self ”. The perception of society changed to one in which society is seen as divided into logically separated domains. In the field of communication tremendous changes took place and so did the viewpoint of observation and the expressions in image and sound.
9 In the Islamic perception, authority is invested in Allah’s representative (¶alìf ) who is the leader of the community of all Muslims (umma). This is based on Mohammed’s Revelation. Worldly power is invested in the sultanate. The 'ulamà is the only institution that can legitimise the power of the sultanate. Both the 'ulamà and the sultanate belong to the same worldly order in which all have to submit to Allah’s will as laid down in the revelation (A. Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India. Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-century Maratha Svarajya (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 22–30; H. Kulke and D. Rothermund, A History of India (London, 1990), p. 203). The Islamic perception corresponds with the Hindu perception in so far as power and authority are mutually exclusive categories. The two perceptions differ in their location. For the Islam both power and authority are located in the world, whereas in the Hindu perception only power is of the world. 10 We may see large cycles here: Ancient Europe, the Middle Ages, the Modern period and the Postmodern period.
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Figure 1: Changes in Europe period
1904
concepts image
surreal
Real
virtual real
sound
monophony
polyphony
a-tonal
viewpoint
Theocentric
Anthropocentric
Cosmocentric
perspective
3-dimensional 3 in 2 dimensional multi dimensional
Nature
is Culture
versus Culture
versus Culture*
person (Self )
multiple
Unitary
unitary*
separated domains
separated domains
supralocal (centralised)
global
perception of society intertwined domains mode of communication
local
* undergoing change now
The concept of the Self seems to be linked with a perception of Society. Considering the past 150 years or so, we see the modern industrial democratic society can only function on the basis of a concept of the unitary person that is one body houses one person who judges all situations in all contexts on the basis of a single set of principles.11 This coincides with the European perception of Society in terms of separate logical domains of reference. The social, cultural, economic, political and other domains of society are viewed as logically separated from one another. In turn this coincides with the view on Nature and Culture. The two are separated, so that Culture can study Nature. Culture, then is divided into separated logical domains of reference, so that a cause-effect chain operates only within one domain and not across the domain’s boundaries. It seems quite certain that the axiom Nature versus Culture and the axioms on cause-effect are European since the Enlightenment,
11 The unitary person can play different roles without change in his set of principles.
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say since the late fifteenth century. This cannot be said of the concept of the unitary person and the perception of society. What does divine centric painting tell us? With the God(s) usually situated above, the divine centric view is one from above. This would imply that a painter can put all 3-dimensional subjects and objects in a 2-dimensional flat surface as long or as small as he perceives them and at any place on the surface. Each subject/object is then painted within its own context, while the relationships between them is expressed in terms of scale, colour or angle. This method of representation does not show logically separated domains but an intertwining of domains. I am not sure whether I am right here and even less sure whether the perception of intertwining domains is necessarily linked with the concepts of the multiple self. If these linkages can be proved, the Enlightenment is clearly a Cognitive Revolution. The decade 1904– 1914 is, then, a hinge as it makes for the culmination of the cognitive revolution. At the same time it seems to me the announcement of a new cognitive revolution. The observed sequence—Arts-Sciences-Politics—urges us to follow modern art, particularly painting, closely. We may now look forward to painting that will go beyond three dimensions, but will have to stay within one sense (sight). House Art and the disappearing of Art in itself: production was followed by reproduction and this is succeeded by no reproduction at all but the artist displays himself as Art or he enters his painting himself; the magic of disappearance (for example “Streetwise” in the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, 1998). The fourth and other dimensions can be described as the “third eye”: the clairvoyance or the looking around a corner. More complicated announcements are thinkable if the artists make use of all five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste and touch) in a 3-dimensional object, or in a simple or multiple spatial context, accomplish a transformation of the dodecaphonic scale into the plastic arts without falling into the trap of Dadaism. These announcements may be followed by Scientific discoveries of the 4th-n dimensions up-setting many of the existing theories. Finally, it may lead to a complete overhaul of known political economic relationships. We may label this second breakthrough as cosmocentric. God will be completely ‘out of the picture’, Man totally dissected, or reconstructed as a clone, and the planet and its micro and macro relationships will take centre stage. The Cosmocentric
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era—plans to colonize the planet Mars have already been worked out—may ultimately proof the existence of cause-effect relationships across the boundaries of domains. After having been separated since the eighteenth century, astronomy and astrology may merge into a qualitatively new science. In each case (1435 and 1904) the Arts announced the change. Science followed first and then politics. The changed conception of Nature triggered a series of disconnections over a period of time, such as land/people; state/church; executive/legislative/judiciary powers; politics/economics; and people/people. The Arts of the decade 1904–1914 announced the second cognitive revolution which is still going on.12 It is cognitive for the information technology has touched established concepts in certain fields. The relationship between Nature and Culture is no longer the same in all domains. In Health sciences, for instance, the distinction between Nature and Culture get increasingly blurred. The concept of the unitary self without which the Modern State cannot exist, is under attack of the virtual reality created by integrated multimedia applications promoting the hyperreal.
Cultural factors in Europe and India The history of Europe shows a tradition of replacement. This is visible in two different domains that are relevant for understanding the present. The histories of survival strategies and political systems show gradual evolution in such a way that one system replaced the earlier one gradually although not always without considerable friction. After Toynbee I believe that the survival strategies changed under the impact of technological revolutions.13 Major discoveries in the
12 Between 1435 and 1904 the plastic arts represented, the music was tonal and science had achieved. From this decade onwards the arts make visible, the music becomes a-tonal and in science the atom as a mini-constellation was discovered. In all cases the arts have preceded science as if the arts had premonitions of what science was going to achieve. The concept of the atom (a-tomos in Greek) was first formulated by Heraclites (544–483 BC). Niels Bohr’s atom model (1913 AD) was a hypothesis based on calculations, not observations. In the political domain the process of decolonization began and later the policy of Realpolitik that is the disconnection of economics from politics. 13 A. Toynbee, A Study of History (London, 1954).
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field of astro-physics forced an all-powerful God to legitimise himself and so the theocentric phase evolved into an anthropocentric. Happiness was no longer sought in the Hereafter but in the Here and Now. The rapid increase in the number of scientific discoveries at increasingly shorter intervals pushed God into the background. As Zygmunt Bauman says: “Bereaved by God and His secular emulators, the modern person needs somebody, ‘some individual ideology of justification’, to replace the declining collective ideologies.” [second italics are mine].14 In Europe one survival strategy followed the other. The Theocentric phase—God is the all-powerful Other; Happiness in the Hereafter—was followed by the Anthropocentric phase—God has to legitimise himself; Happiness Here and Now. Next came the Anthropocentric phase: God became the third party in human love; Happiness in erotic here and now. At present we witness the Cosmocentric strategy: God is Dead; Solitary Happiness here and now. The political system too evolved from one system into another. Early tribal and State systems evolved into feudal systems and finally into the Modern State. In India such evolutions can not be seen. Here we see a tradition of juxtaposition of survival strategies and political systems. In the history of India, cognitive revolutions did take place, but unlike in Europe, they took place on an individual level. With the introduction of Information Technology in India, the second cognitive revolution was introduced by the Modern State. As early as 1936, the German philosopher, Walter Benjamin, stated that until the beginning of the twentieth century every work of Art was unique. Thereafter, each work of Art could be reproduced.15 More than half a century later, the British novelist Julian Barnes, gave a follow-up to Benjamin with his satirical novel “England, England”. Inspired by the American film “Westworld” he describes the valorization of Culture in the age in which everything can be reproduced. What is left over is the hyperreal and the loss of the original. In all places where there is a concentration of industries in the Information Technology sectors, whether in Europe or India, we find amusement parks (“imagination as a separate industrialised domain) of the kind of Disneyland. During the past ten years or so
14 Z. Bauman, “Survival as a Social Construct”, in M. Featherstone (ed.), Cultural Theory and Cultural Change (London, 1992), p. 16. 15 W. Benjamin, Illuminations (London, 1973).
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such Theme Parks have been erected near Paris (Eurodisney and Parc Asterix), near Cologne (Fantasialand), in the Netherlands (the updated Efteling Park), near Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mysore (GRS Fantasy Park) in India. This is no coincidence. The parks that are presented to us as imaginary in contrast to the real, but as Baudrillard puts it “concealing the fact the real is no longer real.”16 In the same environments we see heightened attention for fashion and fashion shows and, of course in Paris, the headquarters of the worldwide satellite FashionTV channel. Fashion has nothing to do with the contrast between beautiful and ugliness. It is “the ecstacy of the beautiful: the pure and empty form of a spiralling aesthetics. Simulation is the ecstacy of the real.”17 The societies around the IT sectors, wherever they are, are no longer real. “The real does not concede anything to the benefit of the imaginary: it concedes only to the benefit of the more real than real (the hyperreal) and to the more true than true. This is simulation.18 We are witnessing the emergence of the Simulation State.
Three traditions and communication The three Indian traditions are juxtaposed. Each tradition has its own mode of communication. For the Scriptural Tradition it is the scriptures; for the Traditional Practices it is a variety of forms such as iconography, song, ballad, theatre; for the Modern State it is railways, telecom (telegraph/telephone/radio/television/fax/internet/ e-mail). There is a certain degree of correspondence between the modes of the Scriptural Tradition and Modern State. Both are supralocal and function on the basis of high skills. Looking at the principles underlying the three traditions, the correspondence is different. Both the Scriptural Tradition and Traditional Practices are based on a principle of segregation (which logically follows from the dominant cultural ideology) whereas the Modern State is based on a principle of integration.19
16 Baudrillard in M. Poster, Jean Baudrillard. Selected Writings (Cambridge, 1992), p. 172. 17 Poster, Jean Baudrillard, p. 187. 18 Poster, Jean Baudrillard, p. 188. 19 On the cognitive level, the Scriptural Tradition and the Traditional Practices
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Figure 2: Old and new juxtapositions in India* Factor Concepts
Scriptural Tradition
Traditional Practices
Modern State
Simulation State
image
realistic perfection
abstract
real
virtual
sound
monophony
monophony
polyphony
polyphony
viewpoint
3-dimensional 3-dimensional
3 in 2 dimensions
3 in 2 dimensions
Nature
is Culture
is Culture
versus Culture
versus Culture
person (Self)
multiple
multiple
unitary
multiple
power and authority
separated
separated
equated
equated
perception of society
integrated domains
integrated domains
separated domains
separated domains
local
supralocal
mode of supralocal communication
global
* In contrast to Figure 1, the horizontal axes here are not chronological
Considered from the point or view of location and message, the Scriptural Tradition stands isolated against the Traditional Practices and Modern State. The Scriptural Tradition is concerned with the ideal placed outside the social world. The Traditional Practices and Modern State are each grounded in the social world. Each having its own mode of communication mainly serving the status quo, although voices of protest can be clearly seen in the Traditional Practices mode, less in the Modern State mode. segregate the transcendent order from the immanent order of the world. Consequently power and authority are separated in the world. The original segregation necessitates the ternary structure of society (two opposed elements and one neutral element) and communication through a series of monologues circulating between the three elements. The Modern State integrates the two orders expressed in the sacrosanct value of its boundaries. Power and authority are integrated concepts. The State is in fact a monopoly but appears as a binary structure. Its binary structure necessitates dialogue as form of communication between two opposites.
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Domains of society and the concept of the self In Indian culture, it is not religious hierarchy which implies a social structure, but renunciation implying the absence of a social structure. The mundane order is one of conflict and interdependence. A study of this order should, therefore, not take for granted the European perception which divides society into separate domains such as the social, cultural, economic, political, and religious. During the past twelve years, a number of studies have shown that the Indian perception of society is different.20 The perception of intertwining domains of the interdependent order cannot easily be understood from an analysis based on another European notion, namely, the unitary concept of the person. In a recent article, Mary Douglas considers the self as a convention and uses our own experience as an example of conventionalised personhood. She thus places the study of personhood under the mentality component of culture. She concludes that in western societies in contrast to Asian and African societies “the embodiment of one person for their lifetime in one body is axiomatic”.21 Indeed, Hindu mythology tells of individuals who may wander from their bodies, a sage who may be turned into a woman, a goldsmith who becomes a king temporally and so on. The Hindu mythology with which I am acquainted abounds in examples of persons who can turn into rocks, animals and other human bodies and do grave damage or exemplary good in their alter persona. It may be stated that the modern industrial, democratic state cannot function without the concept of the unitary person. Discussing 20
Galey demonstrated for a Hindu caste society of the Indian Himalayas that the Indigenous Knowledge System of the inhabitants of the hill districts of Uttar Pradesh is informed by the intertwining domains which we call the religious, the social, the political and the economic ( J.-C. Galey, “Creditors, Kings and Death”, in C. Malamoud (ed.), Debts and Debtors (New Delhi, 1983), pp. 67–121). Ostor’s analytical description of a Bengali town demonstrates the intertwining of such indigenous domains as “history”, “market”, “ritual”, “theatre” and “revolution” (A. Ostor, Culture and Power: Legend, Ritual, Bazaar and Rebellion in a Bengali Society (New Delhi, 1984). In my own study on Indigenous Economic Concepts among South Indian artisans I demonstrated that the social, religious, economic, and political domains are intertwined in the Indigenous Knowledge System ( J. Brouwer, “Conflict between Modern and Indigenous Concepts in the Small Enterprise Workplace. A Proposal”, Social Anthropology, 8 (2000), pp. 181–202). 21 M. Douglas, “The Cloud God and the Shadow Self ”, Social Anthropology, 3 (1995), p. 84.
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the Modern State, Douglas states that “a composite person is unacceptable not for intellectual but for forensic and political reasons”.22 In the judicial field, neither the theory of multiple personalities nor that of intertwining domains is acceptable. In all its fields of operation the Modern State works with the concept of the unitary person and cause/effect relations within a single domain of reference.23 A relevant conclusion drawn from the indological insights states that the Indian world is divided into a social realm of self-interested immanence and an individualized realm of ritual and renunciatory transcendence. Both Dumont and Heesterman agree that in Europe the individual and society coexist in the world, while in India the individual can exist only outside of society as renouncer.24 This leaves Indian society with a collectivity of persons with multiple selves or rather dividuals as the personal level always demands that the self is placed in a context. Each context is guided by its own rules and the person acts accordingly. This is possible if the person consists of more “selves”. In contrast to the unitary person, the multiple person so to speak, is not an in-dividual but a dividual, whom I suggest to call a soloist. This term is given by a comparison of Indian and European classical music. In European classical music the counterpoint, that is different melodies played at the same time, is highly developed. It necessitates harmony between the individual players. Orchestral and particularly symphonic, music is unthinkable without harmony or musical relationship between different but simultaneous
22
Douglas, “The Cloud God”, p. 85. Modern science is axiomatic in its conception of Nature as distinct from Culture, hence Culture can study Nature. It is also axiomatic in its belief in cause-effect thinking. Western perspective regards Nature as “a linear phenomenon in which what happens in a given place and time is determined exclusively by what has occurred at nearby places immediately beforehand” ( J. Barrow, Theories of Everything (London, 1991), p. 13). In other words, in western thinking, the cause-effect chain takes place within in single logical domain of reference. These axioms made it possible to distribute Nature and Culture into different fields of study to the extent of losing sight of the whole. The holistic approach by contrast allows considering the structural relationships of various such reference fields of categories from the vantage point of a topology. It has to be borne in mind that this is significantly different from much of the non-western sciences, in which the holistic view assumes Nature to be intrinsically non-linear, so that “non-local influences predominate and interact with one another to form a complicated whole” (Barrow, Theories, p. 13). 24 Heesterman, The Inner Conflict; L. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus. The Caste System and its Implications (Chicago, 1980). 23
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melodies. By contrast in Indian classical music a limited number of instruments, including the human voice, play the same melody at the same time. The Indian “orchestra” appears as a group of soloists each playing the same melody within the “context” of their own instrument.
Effectivity of modern media Television and its programmes are products of the Modern State. On the level of conceptions, there is a high degree of correspondence between the Modern State and television. From the viewpoint of the Modern State, the television is a medium that represents both power and authority. In India, the majority of television audience belong to the factors of the Scriptural Tradition and the Traditional Practices. These traditions conceptualize power as being distinct from authority. With the “death of the citizen” as Baudrillard (1976) calls it,25 or the shift from the Modern State to the postmodern Simulation State of consumers, the effectivity of television is even less in India than in the West. Surprisingly the Simulation State and two Indian traditions—the Scriptural Tradition and the Traditional Practices— share a few concepts: the idea of virtual reality as an electronic version of the ancient màyà; the concept of the multiple self and a holistic view on the relationship between Nature and Culture. Television is part of the actual situation. I locate life-styles on this level. They are based on perceptions. These are formed in an arbitrary process of interpretation of the cultural ideology (cognitive level, concepts) under abstraction of the actual situation. The effectivity of television is restricted to life-styles and this level. Development of software, in the internet cubicles of the IT Parks, for instance in Bangalore and Mysore, is itself an activity isolated from the actual situation. It is the Russian doll of virtual reality. History has shown that in India new ideas or things are added on to existing ones rather than replacing them. The Modern State became juxtaposed to the other traditions. The Simulation State will
25
J. Baudrillard, L’echange symbolique et la mort (Paris, 1976).
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be juxtaposed to the existing three traditions. The Simulation State will be largely private sector beside the public sector of the Modern State. The identity of the Simulation State may be recognized by: consumers, world music, poster art, poster conferences, virtual reality, individualism in virtual reality and multiple selves. Its success in India seems to be guaranteed for various reasons. Apart from the Modern State, the Indian traditions value detachment and exclusiveness meaning that social relationships have to be denied or made incidental. The indigenous concept of money supports consumerism.26 In the Simulation State “that what is consumed are not objects but the relation itself—signified and absent, included and excluded at the same time—it is the idea of the relation that is consumed in the series of objects which manifests it.”27 Virtual reality is an electronic version of the indigenous concept of màyà. The concept of personhood is already defined in terms of the multiple selves. Each tradition has its own lingua franca. For the Scriptural Tradition it is Sanskrit, for the Traditional Practices it is the modern Indian languages; for the Modern State it is English; and for the Simulation State it appears to become Hinglish (Hindi + English), Kinglish (Kannada + English) and so on. After all, Hinglish and its equivalents, is an elite idiom emanating from the nubs of power located elsewhere in class, education and money. It is an ideological, pidginized form of English that has no space in the corridors of ‘media power’. Finally, the difference of location of the concepts of power and authority in the two subcontinents, the mechanisms of locating— replacement and juxtaposition—of the new and the indigenous views and perceptions determine to a large extent the effectivity of the modern media of communication. In India, television represents unvindicated power. Its authority remains suspended mid-air as long as the rivalry between the three traditions for this medium remains inconclusive. For the internet, software and e-mail the relationships are different. Where the Modern State still stands for the social, the IT promotes the end of the social. It reinforces the individualism that is so apparent in the Scriptural Tradition. From this correspondence it may establish its authority. It would not be surprising
26 27
See Brouwer, “Conflict between Modern”. Poster, Jean Baudrillard, p. 22.
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if the Modern State and the Simulation State are the incipient avatàrs of indigenous—juxtaposed—power and authority. In Europe, television because of its perceived power and authority and by its unilaterality has thrown the social process out of balance. The traditional collectivistic and exchange based European society has pinned great hopes on the corrective effectivity of the internet. But the combination of collectivity and virtual reality creates a new perception of the Self with unforeseen implications for the Modern State.
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FROM CHARIOT TO ATOM BOMB: ARMAMENT AND MILITARY ORGANISATION IN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY Dietmar Rothermund
The instruments of warfare and social stratification Men must have fought with each other for millennia, but the rise of the professional warrior was a comparatively late phenomenon in human history. The warrior acquired special skills which ordinary people did not possess and he compelled them to work for his maintenance. In this way social stratification was introduced and in due course the warriors formed a “nobility”. The instruments of warfare contributed to this development. The more difficult it was to master these instruments, the higher was the demand for skilled warriors who made warfare their full-time profession. Initially the exaction of agrarian surplus from a fairly limited region was sufficient for the maintenance of small groups of warriors. But then the control of long-distance trade yielded higher returns in terms of a protection rent. There was a reciprocal relationship between trade and warfare. Larger empires provided more scope for long-distance trade and could afford more expensive instruments of warfare. In South Asia there have been several instances of this symbiosis of trade and empire, but in general the collection of land revenue from extensive territories was the main source for the maintenance of warriors. State-formation progressed along these lines of the rise of warrior elites. There is, of course, more to the state than the organisation of warfare. The legitimation and manifestation of royal power draws on cultural resources which are not confined to the instruments of warfare, but these instruments are a necessary element of state power. In the present essay state formation will be discussed only in passing. The main emphasis will be on warfare and social stratification, but since this had an impact on state formation it cannot be totally neglected. The instruments of warfare discussed here include weapons as well as animals (war-elephant, war-horse). Discussing these instruments
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also implies paying attention to their tactical or strategic use. But the main emphasis will be on the social consequences of warfare and on the composition and the functions of warrior elites. Social rather than military history will be the mainstay of this essay. The Indus or Harappan civilisation should be the first subject to be discussed in this context, but unfortunately the evidence available is so meagre that it is impossible to arrive at any conclusions. At the most one can draw some inferences from negative evidence. This civilisation obviously did not know the horse. Accordingly there was no “man on horseback” at that time. The excavated sites show no traces of royal palaces or tombs, there were some elevated settlements and places of worship which would indicate that a kind of priestly oligarchy rather than kings and warriors dominated this society. Agricultural planning must have been the major task of this oligarchy. Venturing out into the annually inundated plains of the Indus valley was the essential achievement of the Indus civilisation. This required various skills which went beyond those needed for subsistence agriculture in smaller valleys and plains. The Indus carries twice as much water as the Nile. The inundated plains are fertile, but in order to make use of the yield promised in this way, the people had to adopt new agricultural technologies, had to predict the arrival of the flood and plan sowing and harvesting. For all this the ruling oligarchy must have had specialists. The uniform system of weights and measures which prevailed for about a millennium in this vast region is evidence for the working of the minds of such specialists. They were obviously not warriors and did not need a king to lead them in battle. Nevertheless, the massive fortifications of the main cities show that there must have been some kind of warfare. Traces of arson have been found at some locations. Probably there were raiders from the adjacent mountainous areas who wanted to plunder the rich harvests stored in the cities. Moreover, these cities were centres of longdistance trade in valuable commodities. Defence of this trade and of the grain stored in the cities must have been of great concern at that time. But perhaps there was no warrior elite but bands of peasant soldiers trained for this purpose. The first professional warrior elite of South Asia is obviously that of the people who called themselves àrya (noble). Their main instrument of warfare was the chariot and we shall start our study of military organisation with it.
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The glories and limitations of chariot warfare The evidence for this period of South Asian history is literary and not archaeological. The literature concerned was not reduced to writing until much later, it was transmitted orally for many centuries. But as it was learned and recited “religiously”, its transmission was even more reliable than that of written texts. This literature tells us a great deal about chariot warfare which was at the centre of “Aryan” military preoccupations. But before delving into it, we must emphasize that the chariot entered South Asia as fully developed instrument sometime around 1500 BC or even somewhat later after it had been in use in West Asia for quite some time. A Mesopotamian chariot is depicted on a seal dated between 1850–1650 BC. It shows two warriors standing in a chariot with spoked wheels running over a slain enemy.1 The Hyksos conquered Egypt with their chariots and established the fifteenth dynasty (ca. 1648–1540 BC). They came from western Asia and were thrown out by the Egyptians who adopted the chariot and were henceforth ruled by a chariot-warrior elite.2 Such an elite was also prominent in the Mitanni Empire (northern Syria and northern Iraq) of the Hittites (around 1500 BC). Their chariot-based warriors were called mariyannu and it is stated that they were nominated by the king.3 The Sanskrit sources refer to ugra (the terrible ones) as companions of the king,4 and it is very likely that they played a role similar to that of the mariyannu. Chariot warfare depended on a number of essential elements. First and foremost was the availability of suitable horses. Their natural habitat were the Central Asian steppes and they had been tamed by about the fourth millennium BC. Then there was the lightly built and highly mobile chariot with spoked wheels. It was in evidence in West Asia in the early 2nd millennium BC. The chariot was mainly used for the swift transport of a skilled archer who could shoot arrows with a composite bow of great strength. This bow seems to have been invented in West Asia in the fourth millennium BC, it thus
1 P.R.S. Moorey, “The emergence of the light horse-drawn chariot in the Near East”, World Archaeology, 18 (1986), pp. 196–215 2 A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000–330 BC, 2 vols. (London, 1995), p. 190. 3 Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East, p. 297. 4 W. Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft im alten Indien nach den Brahmana-Texten dargestellt (Wiesbaden, 1957), p. 68.
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ante-dated the chariot. The archer had to wear a mailed coat (made of rhinoceros-skin in South Asia), because he could not carry a shield.5 Next to the archer the driver of the chariot was of great importance. He was unarmed and according to Sanskrit sources he was naked to the waist and would thus have been an easy target for the enemy.6 But the code of honour ruled him out as a target. The concept of dharmayuddha (righteous warfare) prevailed among the warriors who would not attack unarmed men. In terms of rank the chariot-driver was placed lower than the archer, but there are references to his being a close companion of the archer. Some sources mention that the chariot driver was entitled to one fourth of the booty which the archer made in a war.7 The king was expected to be a good archer and the sùta (herald) who accompanied him everywhere was presumably also the driver of his chariot.8 The chariot-culture extended all the way to Greece and there is an ode of Pindar (522–446 BC) celebrating a chariot-driver who knows exactly how to guide the horse by restraining or whipping it at the right moment.9 This was certainly also true of the chariotdrivers of ancient India. The best archer would be lost if he did not have such an expert companion. The division of labour was very pronounced, it seems that in general the one was not trained to master the skills of the other. But there are some exceptions mentioned in Sanskrit literature. In an emergency even a king could volunteer to act as a chariot-driver which implies that he must have learned this art, too. However, there seem to be no references to chariot-drivers turning into archers. In addition to those who used the chariot, the maker of chariots (rathakàra) was also a highly valued specialist. In Sanskrit sources he is mentioned as one of the jewels (ratna) adorning the king’s court. The king had to visit him in the course of certain ceremonies and he seems to have inhabited about the largest compound in the small capital of such an early king. It is said that he had to house the guards of the horse to be sacrificed at the a≤vamedha (horse sacrifice)
5 6 7 8 9
Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 101. Ibidem. Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 103. Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 109. M. Theunissen, Pindar. Menschenlos und Wende der Zeit (München, 2000), p. 888.
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and there could be 400 such guards according to some sources.10 The rathakàra must have been a very wealthy man if he could play host to such a crowd. Chariot warfare appears to have been a chivalrous contest worthy of noble warriors. This would also explain why norms such as not shooting at the unarmed driver of the chariot were scrupulously observed. This type of warfare was restricted to an open and even battlefield. Chariots were not suited for jungle warfare. Being very delicate, they could not cross difficult terrain but had to be transported on bullock carts. They were certainly awe-inspiring for soldiers on foot armed with simple weapons, because they were swift and the arrows of the archers were deadly. But chariot warfare was in general limited to small regions. Most of the early states were small and this type of warfare was adjusted to their needs. As soon as the war-elephants of large empires appeared on the scene, the chariots were lost. The stratification of early “Aryan” society was undoubtedly deeply influenced by this chariot warfare. It was a society in which a “nobility” lorded it over the rest of the population. This “nobility” was divided into a hereditary one from which the kings would be drawn and a lower one, probably appointed by the king because of its military skills. It was explicitly stated that this lower nobility could not be anointed (i.e. aspire to be king).11 But the respect for the king’s hereditary right did not necessarily protect him against internal rebellion. The de-throned king is a figure often mentioned in the Sanskrit sources.12 It is also stated that the ratnas could give and take the kingship. This seems to imply that this entourage could “impeach” the king and drive him away. The nature of this type of early kingship is reflected by the ritual preceding the a≤vamedha. The king would let the designated horse roam freely for a year. It was accompanied by the guards mentioned above. Anybody who would let the horse pass would implicitly recognise the sovereignty of the king. If he stopped it and challenged the guards, this was a declaration of war. This would presumably be conducted by the warriors on their chariots. This flexible test of
10 11 12
Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 112. Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 68. Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 128.
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sovereignty was well suited to the society of “noble” warriors living in small states. If later on rulers of large empires celebrated the a≤vamedha in order to manifest their status they did this without this flexible test as they dominated their territory by different means. They also did not use chariots any longer, except perhaps for ritual purposes. But the memory of the chariot was preserved for a long time. As late as 1012 AD a Cambodian king, Suryavarman I of Angkor, presented a chariot to the Chola king Rajaraja as a ceremonial gift.13 Even in recent years politicians have revived the rathyàtra (tour by chariot) as a symbol of Hindu nationalism. As there are no ancient rathakàras around any longer, they substituted little lorries for the genuine article, but saw to it that they were decorated appropriately.
The triumph of the war-elephant While the chariot survived as a symbol it was literally stamped out as an instrument of warfare by the war-elephants of the great empires of eastern India which soon conquered the entire Gangetic plains. The elephants lived in the great forests of southern Bengal and Orissa. They could never be domesticated, but they could be tamed and made to perform all kinds of tasks. A tribal man from the forest where they had been “recruited” usually accompanied them as their “driver” (mahout). His skills were very different from those of the driver of a chariot and he could never aspire to the ranks of the lower nobility. Nor were the archers on the back of the elephant noble warriors. About ten archers could occupy the platform tied to the back of the elephant and it was the shower of arrows which they could direct at the enemy rather than the well aimed arrow of the elite warrior which mattered in this new type of warfare. The war-elephant was, of course, also the appropriate mount for the king or emperor. Guiding his troops in a battle, he could have an overview of the battlefield from the back of his elephant. Being thus very conspicuous, he would inspire his troops—but also attract the attention of the enemy. The security of the king was of great
13
H. Kulke and D. Rothermund, A History of India (London, 1998), p. 117.
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concern. His fall would put an end to the battle. Accordingly the movements of the royal elephant were narrowly circumscribed. The game of chess which mirrors an Indian battlefield shows this very clearly. The king also mounted the elephant on ceremonial occasions—even British viceroys practised this later on. War-elephants were expensive to maintain and it was not enough to have just a few of them. In medieval times the price of a good war-elephant was considered to be equivalent to that of 500 ordinary horses.14 Several hundred elephants were required for an efficient army corps which could traverse long distances and overwhelm the enemy. The famous transfer of 500 elephants to Seleukos Nikator by Chandragupta Maurya clearly shows the dimensions of this kind of armament. This transfer was made in the context of a peace treaty, it was thus not a generous gift. But presumably Chandragupta had at least 1000 or more elephants left after he had parted with those which he sent to Seleukos. The enormous investment in warelephants made sure that the great empires would expand and the smaller ones would go to the wall. The elephant had a centralising function which the chariot never had. Social stratification in such empires was very different from that of the earlier “Aryan” kingdoms. Imperial officers rather than “noble” warriors were the new ruling elite. The control of long-distance trade became of much greater importance than ever before. One could probably speak of trade-based empires, and the Mauryan one seems to have been a particularly good example. The pattern of distribution of Ashoka’s famous edicts shows that while many areas of the interior remained more or less untouched, the Gangetic plains, the coasts and some trade routes running across the subcontinent were under the control of the emperor. The war-elephants extended the dimensions of military intervention enormously. Imperial governors were posted throughout the empire. They also had to get Ashoka’s edicts carved into rocks. There is evidence of this in a South Indian inscription which contains so to speak the covering letter of instruction in addition to the edict. The man who carved it into stone may well have been illiterate and simply copied everything contained in the paper or palmleaf given to him.
14
S. Digby, War-horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate (Oxford, 1971), p. 68.
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The Mauryas were of low-caste origin, their officers presumably were also not “nobles” but appointed by the emperor because of their valour and loyalty to him. Ashoka also used Buddhist monks as diplomats and imperial messengers. They also could not rank as a “nobility”. A new social stratification appeared only in medieval times when small regional kingdoms copied some of the features of the ancient empires and also based their power on war-elephants. The “nobleman” of medieval times was the sàmanta. This term originally means “neighbour” but then came to mean the subdued neighbour whose realm had been conquered. He was reinstated by the victor but had to attend his court. He became part of a sàmantachakra (circle of neighbours). The gradient of power between sàmanta and king was presumably determined by the number of elephants which they possessed. The sàmanta in due course also attained a position in the royal administration. The chief minister of a king had the title mahàsàmanta (big neighbour) which was somewhat of a paradox, because he was certainly part of the entourage of the king. It has been stated earlier that in the ancient empires the war-elephant helped to sustain central power. On a smaller scale this was also true of the medieval regional kingdoms. But by that time there were competing centres. Elephant-power helped to articulate their importance. The war-elephant retained its role in military affairs even after the cavalry reigned supreme in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Delhi Sultanate maintained large contingents of warelephants. When it was defeated by Timur in 1398 AD the sultanate could still put up 120 elephants which duly frightened Timur’s army although their number was modest as compared to earlier times.15 It was only when field artillery appeared on the battlefield that the power of the war-elephant came to an end. The Great Mughal Babur defeated the sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, with his guns, although Ibrahim had about 1000 elephants on the battlefield.
The “man on horseback”: From slave to ruler When the Delhi Sultanate was established at the beginning of the thirteenth century its power was based on the swift cavalry which 15
Digby, War-horse, p. 80f.
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could cover long distances at a high speed. Just like the chariot which was developed in western Asia and then introduced into India, cavalry warfare had emerged in that area, too. It had contributed to the rapid spread of Islamic rule. But unlike the chariot which gave rise to a nobility of free professional warriors, Islamic cavalry warfare depended on highly specialised slaves who were trained to ride and fight from their childhood. Promising boys could be literally caught young. As slaves they were bound to their ruler by stronger bonds than any noble warrior to his overlord. On the other hand there was an amazing social mobility in such a slave society. A good fighter could quickly rise to become a general and if he was daring enough he could usurp the throne and become a sultan. The war-horse by itself did not have a centralising function, but the system of military feudalism based on the assignment (iq†à' ) of revenue grants which were given to officers for supporting cavalry troops did have such a centralising effect. The sultan usually saw to it that such grants were distributed evenly. Moreover, the holders of such grants were often shifted from one position to the other; by birth as well as by promotion they were usually strangers in the places where they served. Therefore they did not have the benefit of specific local support. They could not think of secession as their colleagues could easily put them down. If they were very ambitious they could only try to conquer the centre of power and replace the sultan. This strengthened central power as only the most daring commander would emerge victorious. In one respect the war-horse also contributed to the centralising of power: it was very expensive. The breeding of war-horses proved to be very difficult in India. The climate was not suited for horses and they succumbed to many illnesses, but there were no experienced veterinarians in India. However, the most important impediment to horse-breeding in India was the absence of adequate pastures which would provide the horses with good grass to eat and ample space to move about. The interior of the Kathiawad peninsula was one of the few places in India which provided such ideal conditions. Typically the local horse-breeders were semi-nomadic predatory tribes.16 Such people would be a pain in the neck for
16 J.J.L. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 (Delhi, 1999), p. 91f.
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settled agriculturists who needed no war-horses but peace and quiet. In due course both these tribes and the horses they bred disappeared. More orderly people would tend horses in stables, depriving them of the free movement which they needed so much and feeding them with fattening food which ruined their health. Thus good war-horses had to be imported into India at a high price. There were two major trade routes—one overland route from Central Asia via Afghanistan and the sea route from the Persian Gulf. The overland route was less expensive and there were fewer casualties among the horses. They could recover on their long march by spending some time in the vast pastures of Afghanistan.17 But for places further down South like Vijayanagara, the sea route dominated by Persian horsetraders was the major one. The king of Vijayanagara paid for horses dead or alive, thus insuring the traders against the risks of sea transport. The total volume of this horse trade must have been enormous. At a rough estimate there must have been more than 500,000 warhorses in South Asia for most of the period from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Presumably one tenth of these horses had to be replaced every year.18 Making some allowance for local breeds this means that about 30–40,000 horses must have been imported annually. This was a substantial burden for the budgets of the states which depended on such imports. In assessing the relative value of war-horses a comparison of their price with that of cows and slaves will be useful. A good horse was worth about 30 cows in the Delhi Sultanate around 1300 AD whereas an adult slave could be bought for the price of 4 to 5 cows.19 A slave who was a good cavalryman was perhaps somewhat more expensive, but at any rate the horse would be more valuable than the rider. For every horse and rider there was at least one groom whose price was presumably much less than that of the cavalryman. Nevertheless a cavalry contingent of about 20,000 horses plus riders and grooms would represent an investment equal to the value of about one million cows. The sultans of Delhi often had more than 100,000 horses at their disposal. When Malik Kafur, sultan Ala al-Din Khalji’s great slave-general, raided southern India in 1310 he brought back 20,000
17 18 19
Gommans, The Rise, p. 80. Gommans, The Rise, p. 89. Digby, War-horse, p. 37.
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horses which had belonged to the Kakatiya king of Warangal. Such plunder deprived the enemies of the Delhi Sultanate of any chance of resistance. It would take them a long time before they could replace such great quantities of horses. All Hindu rulers of the South who had to defend their territories against the Delhi Sultanate had to copy the cavalry system. However, they did not copy the institution of military slavery. Their cavalry officers (nàyak) were free men whose loyalty they tried to preserve in a rather special way. Prataparudra, the Kakatiya king of Warangal, seems to have invented the institution of commanders of bastions of his capital’s fortifications. There were 70 such bastions and each of the important nàyaks of his kingdom was assigned one of them. Tirumala Nayak of Madurai who was originally a subject of the king of Vijayanagara but was practically an independent ruler in the seventeenth century still followed the same custom more than 300 years later. This shows the persistence of a new type of social stratification. The cavalry officer was literally the kingpin in the district which he commanded. Occasionally he could even become the founder of a new city like Kempe Gowda, amaranàyaka of the Vijayanagara kingdom, who established Bangalore. The towns which served as centres of military feudalism all had similar characteristics. They were first and foremost the garrison of a large cavalry contingent and the captain of the cavalry was the highest political authority in the respective district. He controlled the collection of the land revenue and if the peasants were not paying it, he could send men on horseback to frighten them into submission. Earlier institutions of local government would wither away under cavalry domination. In this respect a certain uniformity prevailed throughout the subcontinent due to the exigencies of cavalry warfare regardless of the type of commanders. Whether an officer was a Muslim slave or a Hindu nàyak did not make much of a difference as far as his military and political functions were concerned. Cavalry domination smothered all other forms of governance like a wet blanket. Enduring for many centuries, this system had a lasting impact on the polity of the subcontinent. The next stage of centralised military power based on field-artillery did not introduce much of a change at the local level where the cavalry officer remained in control, it only promoted a new style of empire building.
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The impact of field-artillery
Heavy artillery of a stationary kind was know already to the sultans of Delhi who used it in defending their realm against the Mongols. But artillery warfare reached a new dimension when guns could be moved to the battlefield where they proved to be highly effective both against the cavalry and against war-elephants. Their deployment was, of course, a matter of great strategic skills. If the swift cavalry left the slow-moving guns behind, the battle was over before the guns were in position. The coordination of cavalry and fieldartillery was the hallmark of a good general in this new age. Very often the use of the artillery degenerated into an mere display of firepower. Military showmanship was then more in evidence than strategic or even tactical skills. Generals had normally been trained as horse warriors and treated the artillery with disdain. They shared the feelings of the Syrians and Egyptians whom the Ottoman sultan, Selim I, had defeated with his field-artillery in 1517. They condemned artillery warfare as unchivalrous conduct. Selim, however, was victorious and emerged as the pioneer of this kind of warfare in Asia. The Turks had learned this art from the Europeans. Charles the Bold of Burgundy had won several battles with his “modern” fieldartillery around 1470. His technicians had developed brass guns which could be adjusted with special mechanisms so as to aim at distant targets with great accuracy. This technology spread very fast and while Charles the Bold operated in a fairly small region, Selim extended his empire with his firepower very rapidly over large distances. Before he conquered Syria and Egypt in 1517 he had defeated the Safavid Shah Ismail of Persia in the battle of Chaldiran in 1514 (Chaldiran is located about 100 kilometers Southwest of Erivan, the present capital of Armenia). Shah Ismail quickly recovered from this defeat and adopted artillery warfare too. Only twelve years after the battle of Chaldiran, Babur, the first Great Mughal, defeated the sultan of Delhi with the guns produced for him by Turkish experts. Babur had been trained as an archer. Artillery warfare was new to him and yet he used it to such good effect that he conquered almost the whole of northern India with its help. His strategic design of the battle of Panipat near Delhi was admirable. He deployed his guns in a broad front, placing marksmen with muskets between them so as to prevent the enemy’s cavalry from overwhelming the gun-
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ners. This was what Selim had done at Chaldiran, a battle plan which Babur obviously had studied in detail. But in addition Babur used the Uzbek tactics of archers on horseback to drive the huge army of the sultan towards the battery of guns.20 The archers would dash along the flanks of the sultan’s army, turn around their horses and shoot their arrows at the moment when the horse stood still. They repeated this manoeuvre again and again. Combining these tactics with artillery warfare was certainly a strategic feat. Presumably Babur was the first one to adopt this combination. The field-artillery remained the mainstay of Mughal power throughout. It was an extremely expensive type of armament and its production required special skills. Even when the Rajputs had become trusted allies of the Mughals, the art of producing guns remained a secret which was not passed on to them. The maharaja of Jaipur could start his own gunfoundry only much later when the power of the Great Mughal had declined. The Mughals not only paid much attention to the gunfoundry, they also improved the gun carriages to make the guns more mobile and better suited for accurate firing. Babur’s guns were only loosely mounted on carts and had to be taken down in order to be put in a proper firing position. In addition to the improvement of guns and carriages, the Mughals also produced better gunpowder than the Europeans, because they had access to excellent Indian saltpetre which was also exported at a handsome profit.21 The Great Mughal spent a great deal of his time on tour so as to display his power in all parts of his vast empire. His camp was huge and well equipped. The field-artillery always accompanied him. When the camp was shifted, the artillery was sent ahead two days earlier to the next location.22 This was a rather leisurely procedure. But the artillery also accompanied the Mughal army to distant battlefields. Thus Prince Dara Shukoh on an expedition to Afghanistan managed to cross the Bolan Pass with his artillery in 1653.23
20 S. Förster, “Feuer gegen Elefanten, Panipat, 20. April 1526”, in S. Förster et al. (eds.), Schlachten der Weltgeschichte. Von Salamis bis Sinai (München, 2001), pp. 123–37. 21 J.J.L. Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London, 2002), pp. 148–9. 22 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 107. 23 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 24.
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How did the introduction of field-artillery contribute to a new type of social stratification as the chariot, the elephant and cavalry warfare had done? Its impact was indirect rather than immediately obvious. First of all it remained a comparatively rare and highly centralised type of armament. Those who operated it were usually foreign specialists and their numbers were limited, they certainly did not constitute as new “nobility”. But the indirect social consequences were important. The new Mughal imperial hierarchy of manßabdàrs created by Akbar could be conceived of only in an artillery-based empire with strong central authority. One the face of it, this was a hierarchy of cavalry officers defined to a large extent in terms of the number of horses and cavalrymen to be maintained by the respective manßabdàr. But manßab meant “rank” and though it was initially defined in terms of cavalry contingents, the system was also extended to all kinds of imperial officers and even to poets and musicians who were naturally not obliged to maintain cavalry troops. The regulation of manßab and the appointment of the officers remained an imperial privilege, and the emperor’s superior position rested to a large extent on the power of his artillery. In general a “nobility” is constituted by birthright, officers appointed and removed at will by an emperor are usually not considered to be “noblemen”. But detailed research has shown that the imperial hierarchy of the manßabdàrs under Mughal rule showed an amazing stability and continuity. Sons of manßabdàrs had a good chance to join the imperial service. They would not necessarily inherit the position which their father had attained at the end of his career, but they would often rise to a similar position during their lifetime. To that extent the manßabdàrs evolved into a quasi-nobility. Moreover, there was a peculiar mechanism which strengthened the position of this quasi-nobility, this was the pattern of succession to the throne of the Great Mughal. There was no primogeniture, any Mughal prince could aspire to the throne and sometimes the war of succession started even when the father of the princes was still alive. Such a war of succession would only be fatal for the princes who lost it. One could speak of a kind of dynastic Darwinism which actually strengthened the Mughal Empire, because it would not be governed by a weakling who happened to succeed because it was his turn. The manßabdàrs would invariably take sides with one prince or the other in such a war of succession, but even if it turned out that they had been on the wrong side, this would in general not harm their
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career. On the contrary, the victor would do his best to reconcile them to his rule as he needed them in order to consolidate his control of the vast empire. The imperial “quasi-nobility” thus held a fairly strong position for nearly two centuries. This system collapsed in the eighteenth century, because the Mughal Empire had so to speak lived beyond its means. The agrarian base could no longer bear the expensive superstructure. Local discontent of various types took a violent turn and challenged imperial authority. Such insurgency could not be easily suppressed by the mighty field-artillery. Guerilla warfare eluded the Mughal army. The Great Mughal became a powerless figure in the eighteenth century who did not control more than his capital Delhi—and even that was sacked several times. A number of regional kingdoms emerged and there was a general commercialisation of power. Tax farmers often controlled such regional states and had a greater say in the affairs of the state than the respective ruler. Artillery proliferated, its production was no more a closely guarded secret. All rulers had some guns, but as they still remained expensive, none of them had enough of them to build a new empire with their support. Moreover, the rulers of the eighteenth century rarely had the ability to use their artillery strategically as Babur had done. When there was another battle at Panipat in 1761, it took a course which was different from that of 1526. The Marathas met the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani in this fateful battle. They had deployed an impressive fieldartillery, but they had no means to drive the enemy’s army towards their guns. The actual battle then took place beyond the reach of that mighty artillery. Ahmad Shah, however, used a very effective stratagem. He put light swivel guns on the back of camels and caused havoc among the Marathas in this way. Such swivel guns (zambùrak) mounted on camels had earlier been used by Aurangzeb.24 But it seems that only Ahmad Shah used it to good effect against an enemy who was not prepared for it. He won the battle but then retired to Afghanistan while the Marathas returned to their Southern habitat. This left a power vacuum in Northern India which was soon filled by the British. The secret of their success was based on a new type of warfare. They had drilled a native infantry which mowed down
24
Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 128.
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the Indian cavalry with merciless precision. The weapons used by those infantry men were freely available everywhere, they were also rather cheap. The superiority of the British-trained infantry was only a matter of military organisation, not of any technological advantage.
“Standing armies”: The rise of modern infantry Muskets and other such guns had been known in India since the days of Babur. But the typical Indian marksman was an individualist. He looked for his own specific aim and shot at it, often with remarkable precision. But the loading and cleaning of the type of guns available in those days took time. This could be only compensated for by carefully timed collective action. While one file of soldiers fired their shots the other would re-load their guns. With precise timing this kind of manoeuvre could produce the effect of a human “machine gun. This was a matter of drill and a few European drill sergeants were enough to introduce this new type of warfare in India. Infantry warfare of this kind was a relatively new achievement even in Europe. Important advances in infantry warfare had been introduced in Europe even before infantry was armed with guns. They were also based on well-timed collective action. Thus Swiss footsoldiers had been trained to form a tight column which could be driven like a wedge through the lines of the enemy. Once they were behind the lines, these footsoldiers would swarm out and attack the enemy from the back. This was not exactly chivalrous but very effective. In 1476 the Swiss were able to defeat Charles the Bold of Burgundy in this way at the battle of Murten.25 The Ottoman sultans had a well-trained infantry in the early sixteenth century, the janissaries, who were armed with muskets,26 but the most prominent infantry of that century was the Spanish one. They impressed the enemy with huge formations which were called “terzios”. A single terzio would often consist of 2000 men, mostly
25 G. Himmelsbach, “ ‘Je l’ay emprins—ich habs versucht’. Murten, 22. Juni 1476”, in Förster, Schlachten, p. 118. 26 G. Kronenbitter, “Belagern und Entsetzen. Wien, 12. September 1683”, in Förster, Schlachten, p. 155.
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armed with pikes, but with musketeers at the four corners. The imperial army of the Hapsburg dynasty deployed such mighty terzios in the battles of the Thirty Years War. But they were confronted with a highly innovative enemy, the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who perished in the battle of Lützen in Saxony in 1632 when he was only 38 years old. He was the first to form small companies of musketeers who would take turns in firing their salvoes and reloading their guns. He also supplemented his cavalry with dragoons, musketeers on horseback, who could swiftly attack or encircle the enemy’s lines.27 His astute tactics and brilliant strategy were copied by others in later years. The common denominator of European infantry warfare was organised collective action and not individual marksmanship. The rise of the new infantry warfare coincided with the recruitment of standing armies in Europe. The idea that one could defend oneself in a fortress and recapture one’s territory after the enemy had disappeared was given up. The fate of states was now decided in the open battlefield were large numbers of troops were pitted against each other. These troops consisting of well-trained footsoldiers were housed in barracks and maintained on a permanent footing. In India troops were usually recruited ad hoc and there was always a floating population of soldiers looking for suitable employment.28 Infantry drill, however, was like a strenuous type of sport for which constant exercise was required. Actually infantry warfare was not at all of the centralising kind. It was cheap and it could easily proliferate. But in India, due to the prevailing cavalry mentality of its warriors who always looked down on the humble footsoldier, infantry warfare was simply beyond the comprehension of rulers and generals. The Mughals had never recruited a specialised infantry like the Ottoman janissaries.29 At the most they relied on their marksmen (tufangchìs) who aimed their shots individually but were not trained in collective action. This was of great advantage to the European East India Companies. They did
27 R. Weigley, “Auf der Suche nach der Entscheidungsschlacht. Lützen, 16. November 1632”, in Förster, Schlachten, p. 142f. 28 D.H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990). 29 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 156.
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not attract much attention when they started to recruit native footsoldiers and trained them in their “factories” as their trading posts were called. The French Governor Dupleix was the pioneer in this field. The British soon copied his methods and even imported British soldiers who could do double duty. As quite a few of them had been weavers before, they could give technical advice to Indian weavers so that they could produce exactly the kind of cloth which the East India Company needed—and they could also train native footsoldiers.30 By the early eighteenth century when this type of infantry warfare was introduced into India, the footsoldiers had not only mastered the method of rapid fire invented by Gustavus Adolphus, but also the additional skill of shifting to lethal attacks with the bayonet mounted on the gun which replaced the earlier pike in the late seventeenth century. When the pike was still in use it was wielded by footsoldiers without guns who usually outnumbered those carrying muskets. Combining the gun with the pike by means of the bayonet which could be fixed to the gun in no time made smaller contingents doubly effective. Moreover, the old musket had by now been replaced by improved guns with greater precision and more convenient ignition. In addition to being masters of infantry warfare, the East India Company had also another great advantage. As it was in itself a product of the commercialisation of power at home it fitted quite well into the trend of commercialisation of power in India in the eighteenth century. Moreover, its leading men were bookkeepers rather than daring military heroes. They always paid their soldiers regularly and never indulged in military adventures which were unprofitable. In this way they were far superior to Indian rulers and generals who often won a battle but lost the war, because they suddenly found out that they could not pay their soldiers any longer. This “calculating” spirit of the British was accompanied by a rather reliable collective memory. All servants of the Company, bookkeepers and heroes alike, were parts of an organisation with a strong esprit de corps. Due to the need of reporting all essential events and decisions to the distant headquarters in London, the servants of the
30 S. Aiolfi, Calicos und gedrucktes Zeug. Die Entwicklung der englischen Tuchveredelung und der Tuchhhandel der East India Company, 1650–1750 (Wiesbaden, 1987), p. 381f.
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Company kept records to which they could easily refer. Collective action backed up by collective memory was the secret of the power of the British in India.
The military heritage of the British-Indian Empire While military organisation was very important for the rise of British power in India, the consolidation of that power depended on the “civil service”. Actually in the earlier years of British rule, many of the new “civil servants” who formed the backbone of the territorial administration had a military background. But once they took up a “civil” position, they became part of a bureaucratic hierarchy and the rank they had acquired as a military officer remained a purely honorific title. The military, on the other hand, retained its professional integrity and did not meddle with political affairs. There was never a military coup in the British-Indian Empire. Of course, the large colonial army—first of the East Indian Company and then of the Crown—was an army of Indian soldiers commanded by British officers. The idea of a rebellious British officer leading his Indian soldiers against his own countrymen was simply inconceivable. The Mutiny of 1857 showed that it was not inconceivable that the soldiers got rid of their British officers and rebelled against British rule. But it also proved that without adequate military leadership such a mutiny was bound to fail. This confirmed the British resolve never to commission Indian officers. They had to break this rule only in the Second World War when two million Indian soldiers defended the empire and there were not enough British officers available at that time. This is how about 8000 Indian officers were commissioned during the war who after independence formed the officer corps both of the Indian and of the Pakistan army. The British success in controlling a large imperial army for about 150 years with a corps of expatriate officers and keeping the population unarmed by the rigorous application of an “Arms Act” had no parallel in history. In addition, they managed to support this army entirely from the money paid by Indian taxpayers. When this army was serving abroad on imperial missions it was supposed to be financed from British sources, but even this was circumvented and the Indian taxpayer had to foot the bill for several of such ventures, too. For instance, when Indian troops were deployed in Egypt,
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the government in London argued that the Suez Canal was actually more important for India than for Great Britain so as to justify its refusal to pay for those troops.31 The British-Indian army was a big standing army. After the Mutiny it was considered to be necessary to station a substantial number of British soldiers in India (about 60,000) as a counterweight to the Indian soldiers (about 120,000). The cost of maintaining the British soldiers in India was much higher than the amount spent on the much larger Indian contingent. As imperial “duties” such as the annexation of Upper Burma demanded more military power, the total strength of the army was augmented to 210,000.32 The infantry remained the mainstay of the British-Indian army. It was only at a very late stage that a new type of armament was introduced—the tank. This new military vehicle combined the mobility of a chariot with the ruggedness of a war-elephant and the firepower of the field artillery. Other services such as the navy and the airforce had no role in British-India. They emerged only in independent India and Pakistan. The recruitment for the British-Indian army was highly skewed. As Sikhs and Panjabi Muslims had helped the British at the time of the Mutiny, they were praised as “martial races” and were given preference in the British-Indian army. This meant that the Panjab benefited much more than any other British-Indian province from the remittances of the soldiers to their families at home. The lion’s share of military emoluments was, however, claimed by the British officers who not only received a high pay while they were in service, but also very generous pensions after they retired and settled in Great Britain. These pensions were part of the famous “Home Charges”, the substantial transfer of funds from India to Great Britain. Indian nationalists had criticised this excessive expenditure and had asked for an “Indianisation” of the corps of officers. They could rejoice in the Indianisation brought about by the Second World War. After the attainment of independence, the army was welcomed as a national asset and not treated as mercenaries of the British. The Indian National Army (INA) recruited from among Indian prison-
31 W. Simon, Die britische Militärpolitik in Indien und ihre Auswirkungen auf den britischindischen Finanzhaushalt, 1878–1919 (Wiesbaden, 1974), p. 229. 32 Simon, Die britische Militärpolitik, p. 277.
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ers of war in Southeast Asia by the militant nationalist, Subhas Chandra Bose, was not re-integrated into the Indian army who regarded them as traitors. Some lip-service of national respect was accorded to the INA, but it simply faded away—as old soldiers are expected to do. In Southeast Asia and even in Burma, which had been a part of British-India until 1936, political armies emerged which had actively participated in freeing their nations from colonial rule. The officers of such political armies felt entitled to interfere with national politics. The INA could have easily emerged as such a force in India, but the course of events prevented this—and saved Indian democracy. Strangely enough two very different armies emerged from the same stock of the British-Indian army in India and Pakistan. The British tradition was that of a professional army loyal to civil authority. But preserving this tradition also required a strong civil authority. Such an authority emerged in India where Nehru as Prime Minister laid the foundations of a resilient parliamentary democracy. It did not emerge in Pakistan, where Jinnah opted for the post of GovernorGeneral and continued the viceregal tradition of running the state with the help of the bureaucracy. Moreover, Jinnah died very soon and his successors were not of his stature. Under such circumstances the army took over and ruled the country with the help of the bureaucracy. Although the Indian and the Pakistani army were strongly influenced by British traditions, there soon emerged a fundamental difference of their social structure after independence. There was no conscription in British-India nor in independent India or Pakistan. As has been pointed out earlier, the British recruited their soldiers mostly from the “martial races” of the Panjab. Of those “martial races”, India inherited the Sikhs and even today about 20 per cent of the officers of the Indian army are Sikhs. But as a democratic state, India had to balance its recruitment for the army so that all parts of India were adequately represented amongst its soldiers, the more so as service in the army is highly coveted. Soldiers are respected and comparatively well paid. The same is true in Pakistan, but there no compulsion was felt to deviate from the old practice of recruiting soldiers from among the “martial race” of Panjabi Muslims. This produced a very cohesive army which is extremely proud of its valour and looks down upon everybody else in South Asia. Unfortunately this has prompted the generals of that army to embark ever so often
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on risky ventures which invariably ended in defeat. Nevertheless they refused to learn from past experience, nor did any politician emerge who could put them in their place. It so happened that this proud army again and again got a shot in the arm from the Americans who needed partners in first fighting communism, then the Soviets in Afghanistan and finally the Taliban who had been initially nurtured by Pakistan with American aid. All this contributed to the rise of the Pakistan army as a “state within the state” claiming not only the attention of the Americans but also the lion’s share of Pakistan’s budget. This latter claim they could only sustain by constantly pointing to the Indian threat. In reacting to Pakistan, India obliged the Pakistan army in living up to such a threat perception. Sabre-rattling along the border thus became almost a standard ritual. The most conspicuous defeat of the Pakistani army manifested itself in the loss of East-Pakistan which then became Bangladesh. Actually the social composition of the Pakistani army which has been mentioned above contributed to this defeat and also helped it to shrug it off. When sent to East-Pakistan to fight against secession, the Panjabi army behaved like a rather insensitive occupation force and thus precipitated this secession rather than preventing it. Faced with the loss of East-Pakistan which had always remained a strange place to the Panjabis, they did not regret is very much. The 90.000 Pakistani soldiers who had been captured by the Indian army in what was now Bangladesh were promptly returned to Pakistan, thus the Panjabi army had lost very few men in that war and could return to business as usual. President Bhutto who actually owed his rise to the presidency to the secession which he officially deplored but secretly enjoyed, tried to “frame” his generals by holding them responsible for that defeat. He was finally executed by a general for this very reason. After having liquidated their most resourceful challenger, the Pakistani army could deal with lesser lights in due course. Before meeting his fate, Bhutto had taken a major step in launching Pakistan on the path to nuclear power. As early as 1972 he was advocating the “Islamic bomb” with which Pakistan hoped to gain parity with India. With the emergence of the atomic bomb South Asia then parted with the British-Indian heritage and set up a completely new pattern. The contours of this pattern are not yet as clearly visible as the historical features which we have discussed so
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far. The last section of this paper is therefore conjectural rather than based on firm evidence. The centralised power of the “atom state” In dealing with the “atom state” in South Asia we are again primarily interested in the social and political consequences of the adoption of this new type of armament rather than in the technological and strategic aspects of nuclear warfare. Nevertheless, a short review of the emergence of the atom bomb in India and Pakistan is required in order to understand its consequences. Until the tests of 1998 all preparations were closely guarded secrets and “nuclear ambiguity” was the policy of both India and Pakistan. Now, since the bombs are so to speak “on display”, the history of the respective preparations has been openly discussed. The review must also include a brief summary of the conflicts between India and Pakistan. These conflicts gave rise to the quest for the atom bomb and now shape the relations between the two atom states. The quest for the bomb started in India in the late 1960s after China had joined the “nuclear club” in 1964 and Prime Minister Shastri’s idea of a “nuclear umbrella” which another big power would be prepared to hold over India had failed for obvious reasons. In 1971 at the time of the secession of Bangladesh, President Nixon had sent an aircraft carrier armed with nuclear missiles into the Bay of Bengal. As he later on admitted, he would have used those missiles against India if the Soviet Union had joined the war. He would have probably hesitated to do so if India would have had nuclear weapons, too. Indira Gandhi may have known about this, at any rate she ordered the explosion of a “nuclear device” in 1974 and this spurred Bhutto to speed up his quest for an “Islamic bomb”. He encouraged the activities of the Pakistani scientist, A.Q. Khan, who was later on praised as the “father of the Islamic bomb”, but he also got additional technological support from China. Writing about it in his death cell in 1977, Bhutto stated that his greatest claim to national fame could be based on his success of concluding a treaty on nuclear technology transfer with China in 1976. General Zia got Bhutto executed but continued his nuclear programme with equal vigour. In 1977 Morarji Desai had become Prime Minister of India. As an old Gandhian he did not like the idea of
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India having an atom bomb. He even deplored the explosion of a “nuclear device” in 1974. Indira Gandhi then returned to power in 1980 and once more encouraged the quest for an Indian atom bomb. She actually wanted to conduct a test in 1983, but did not do it because of American pressure. By 1989 Abdul Kalam, who was later praised as the “father of the Indian atom bomb” was already working on the actual production of such bombs. By 1990 the Government of Pakistan was in a position to lower the veil of “nuclear ambiguity” and actually dropped hints at its nuclear potential. When Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao came to know that China had supplied Pakistan with M-11 rockets which could be fitted with nuclear warheads, he was about to order Indian nuclear tests in 1995 but then succumbed to American pressure. In 1996 Narasimha Rao lost the elections and Atal Behari Vajpayee failed to form a government, otherwise he could have fulfilled his party’s programme of “going nuclear” even at that time. The “Third Force” of regional parties which then formed the government was neither willing nor able to “go nuclear”. Moreover, Pakistan which was troubled by economic problems did not flaunt its nuclear potential at that time. When Vajpayee then did form a coalition government in 1998, his first statement sounded as if he wished to continue the policy of “nuclear ambiguity”. But soon thereafter Pakistan tested a missile called “Ghauri”, named after the Muslim conqueror who had overrun northern India around 1200 AD. The missile was of North-Korean origin and had only been renamed in Pakistan, but its new name was a message which Vajpayee could not ignore. He forthwith ordered the series of nuclear tests in May 1998 which were soon followed by Pakistan’s. Both nations had now “outed” themselves as atomic powers. Vajpayee, who obviously believed that the theory of mutual deterrence would now also apply to India and Pakistan, started a “peace initiative” by taking a bus to Lahore and embracing his Pakistani colleague, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif was embarrassed by Vajpayee’s hug, because he knew that General Musharraf, the chief of the Pakistan army, was preparing a “proxy war” in Kashmir at that time. Musharraf is a specialist in mountain warfare and had made preparations for this venture for a long time. He firmly believed that such “proxy wars” can be conducted without nuclear escalation. In fact, the threat of such escalation would give the aggressor a tactical advantage. In this particular instance his troops would cross
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the Line of Control in Kashmir and gain some advantages while the Indian defenders would be taken by surprise and not dare to cross the line for fear of nuclear retaliation.33 In the “Kargil war” of summer 1999 which Musharraf had planned in this way, everything seemed to work according to his expectations—except for the successful Indian reaction. While the Pakistanis had crossed the Line of Control, the Indians did not do so but managed to defeat the Pakistanis nevertheless. By the end of June 1999 when Musharraf met the American Chief of Staff, General Anthony Zinni, who had come to Pakistan in order to put and end to this affair, Musharraf knew that his game was up and readily agreed to a withdrawal. But he also saw to it that President Clinton would receive Prime Minister Sharif in Washington on July 4, 1999. Sharif was not in Pakistan at that moment and when he returned Musharraf sent him off to Washingtom, assuring him of Clinton’s personal interest and asserting that the Kashmir issue had been successfully “internationalised” in this way.34 Due to this clever arrangement, it was not Musharraf but Sharif who had to sign a capitulation in Washington, taking the blame for Musharraf ’s unsuccessful “brinkmanship”. Although the Kargil war ended with a defeat for Pakistan, it nevertheless established the fact that “proxy wars” can be conducted under the roof of mutual deterrence. Of course, the USA and the Soviet Union had also conducted hot “proxy wars” in the era of the Cold War, but these had not been fought across a Line of Control which was practically the border between the two nations. Actually it seems strange that Musharraf should speak of a proxy war in this context. But in order to understand this one must know that Pakistan maintained throughout that the troops that had crossed the Line of Control were “Kashmiri freedom fighters” and not regular Pakistani soldiers. The Indian side could prove that they were fighting regular Pakistani troops and not “freedom fighters”, but the Pakistani side stuck to its pretence and even refused to accept the corpses of its soldiers. The events of September 11, 2001 and the American “alliance against terror” complicated the relations between the two South Asian
33 D. Rothermund, Krisenherd Kaschmir. Der Konflikt der Atommächte Indien und Pakistan (München, 2002), p. 99. 34 Rothermund, Krisenherd, p. 105f.
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atom states even further. Islamic terrorists now felt called upon to drive a wedge between the two new partners of this alliance. The first attempt was a suicide attack on the legislative assembly of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in Srinagar. Maulana Masood Azhar who planned this attack immediately thereafter released the names of four of those who had sacrificed their lives in Srinagar. They were all citizens of Pakistan. Obviously this was meant to embarrass Musharraf whom the terrorists regarded as a traitor. India obviously saw this point and did not make much of this incident so as not to upset the American sponsors of the “alliance against terror”. But the next attack which was probably also masterminded by Azhar could not be taken lightly. In December 2001 terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament. They were gunned down by Indian police at the last moment. They had used a police car and police uniforms to disguise themselves. The Government of India claims that they have firmly established the complicity of two Pakistani terrorist groups in this attack. The Pakistani side denies that, but has not offered an alternative explanation. The Government of India had to react to this severe provocation and massed Indian troops at the border so as to force Musharraf to do something against the terrorists. He also had to respond to American pressure concerning this and got some terrorists arrested. He then made Prime Minister Vajpayee the target of all kinds of friendly gestures, but, of course, Vajpayee continued to see in him the man who had prepared the Kargil war while he was hugging Sharif in Lahore. For the time being the feud between the two atom states has been suspended due to massive American efforts at mediation. But the feud could easily flare up again due to some provocation. The special problem in South Asia is that this provocation may not come from a government but from freewheeling terrorists who have their own agenda. When we turn to the centralising aspects of the atom state which we want to highlight here, we may start with the issue of fighting terrorism, because terrorists pose a twofold challenge to the atom state, they may attack nuclear installations or steal nuclear weapons and they may cause a nuclear war between two atom states by hitting the centre (Parliament or government etc.) of one state while obviously representing the other. Therefore the atom state needs special methods and forces dedicated to counterinsurgency. India’s National Security Guards (“Black Cats”) are a special force of this
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kind. Nowadays they mostly serve as bodyguards of members of government. They are a small force of at the most 10,000 men. Their manpower and their equipment must be upgraded in order to meet the new requirements of the atom state. “Black Cats” can only operate successfully if they are backed up by suitable intelligence. Very intensive surveillance will certainly be one of the undesirable but necessary consequences of maintaining an atom state. Citizens will have to acquiesce in it, because they otherwise face the alternative of perishing in a nuclear holocaust. The Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan which has so far been mostly active in breeding terrorists may also be useful when it comes to controlling them. But not only counterinsurgency requires new forces and new methods, the armed forces in general have to face new tasks in an atom state. The hope that mutual deterrence may put an end to conventional warfare and help to reduce military expenditure is an illusion. Musharraf ’s Kargil war has demonstrated this very clearly. Moreover, there is the new type of auxiliary armament without which nuclear warheads would be useless. Rockets of various kinds are required, and there have to be rocket regiments to handle them. So far there are very few of such rocket regiments in South Asia, but they will certainly proliferate. Then there are military satellites which may be used for reconnaissance as well as for targeting. All this equipment is very expensive and will be a burden on the defence budget. The central budget which in India has always been much larger than the sum of al state budgets will probably have to be upgraded for such purposes. This will be a further blow to Indian federalism. In fact, just as all other expensive weapons like elephants, good warhorses and field artillery which have been discussed above, the atom bomb privileges the central power. Moreover, decision making will have to be highly centralised in an atom state. In may ways the atom bomb serves as a symbol of centralised national power. India which has always been attuned to symbolism in politics has even managed to provide this with a personal equation: Abdul Kalam, the “Father of the Indian Atom Bomb” has been elected President of India.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF D.H.A. KOLFF
1966 Kolff, D.H.A., “Libertatis Ergo: De beroerten binnen Leiden in de jaren 1566 en 1567”, Leids Jaarboekje, pp. 118–48. 1969 Duke, A.C. and D.H.A. Kolff, “The Times of Troubles in the County of Holland, 1566–1567”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 82, pp. 316–37. 1971 Kolff, D.H.A., “Sanyasi Trader-Soldiers”, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 8,2, pp. 213–8. 1972 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van E. Leach and S.N. Mukherjee (eds), Elites in South Asia”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 85, pp. 235–7. 1973 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van N. Mansergh and E.W.R. Lumby (eds), The Transfer of Power, 1942–7, Vols I & II”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 86, pp. 487–9. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of A.M. Serajuddin, The Revenue Administration of the East India Company in Chittagong, 1761–1785”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 16, pp. 111–2. 1974 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van A.C. Niemeijer, The Khilafat Movement in India, 1919–1924”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 87, pp. 123–5. Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van C. Dobbin, Urban Leadership in Western India: Politics and Communities in Bombay City, 1840–1885”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 87, p. 265. Kolff, D.H.A., “Economische ontwikkeling zonder sociale verandering: De katoen van Hindoestan”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 87, pp. 545–53. 1975 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 1898–1920”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 88, pp. 420–1. 1976 Kolff, D.H.A., “Indië in de Middeleeuwen” [i.e. Kolff’s Dutch translation of A.K. Majumdar], in G. Mann and A. Nitschke (eds), Universele Wereldgeschiedenis, VI, Den Haag and Hasselt, pp. 107–84.
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1978 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van H.K. s’Jacob (red.), De Nederlanders in Kerala 1663–1701: De memories en instructies”, in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 91, pp. 115–6. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 21,3, pp. 334–6. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of R.N. Banerjee, Economic Progress of the East India Company on the Coromandel Coast, 1702–1746”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 21,3, p. 336. 1979 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van J.M. Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience: The Mahatma in Indian politics, 1928–34”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 92, pp. 269–71. Kolff, D.H.A., “A Study of Land Transfers in Mau Tahsil, District Jhansi”, in K.N. Chaudhuri and C.J. Dewey (eds.), Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 53–85. Kolff, D.H.A., “Kaste in India”, Zuid-Azië Bulletin, 1, pp. 1–8. Kolff, D.H.A. and H.W. van Santen (eds.), De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal Indië, 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie (Werken uitgegeven door de LinschotenVereeniging, LXXXI), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Van Anrooij, Francien, Dirk H.A. Kolff, Jan T.M. van Laanen, and Gerard J. Telkamp (eds), Between People and Statistics: Essays on Modern Indonesian History presented to P. Creutzberg, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Kolff, D.H.A., “De Kontroleur G.K. van Hogendorp (1844–1879): Een enthousiast statisticus”, in Van Anrooij et al. (see above), pp. 175–206. Kolff, D.H.A., “Introduction” to “Chapter I: Science and Technology in Indian History”, in Asie du Sud: Traditions et Changements (Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, no. 582), Paris, pp. 31–2. 1980 Hoetjes, B.J.S., D.H.A. Kolff, en D. Kooiman, India (Panorama van de Wereld), Haarlem: Romen. 1981 Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of E. van Donzel, Foreign Relations of Ethiopia 1642–1700: Documents relating to the Journeys of Khoja Murad”, Bibliotheca Orientalis, 38, pp. 202–5. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of Keller, Strukturen der Unterentwicklung, Indien 1757–1914”, The Journal of Asian Studies, 40,2, pp. 408–9. 1982 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van S.F. Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mappilas of Malabar 1498–1922”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 95, pp. 239–40. Emmer, P.C., D.H.A. Kolff, and R.J. Ross, “The Expansion of Europe and the Transformation of Third World Agriculture: Two Colonial Models”, Itinerario, 6, pp. 433–77. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of Susil Chaudhuri, Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal, 1650–1720: With Special Reference to the English East India
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Company”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 25,3, pp. 328–9. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of H.W. van Santen, De Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Gujarat en Hindoestan, 1620–1660”, Itinerario, 6, pp. 10–2. 1983 Kolff, D.H.A., “An Armed Peasantry and its Allies: Rajput Tradition and State Formation in Hindustan, 1450–1850” (Unpublished PhD thesis, Leiden University). Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of C.A. Bayly, Rulers Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870”, Itinerario, 7, pp. 148–50. 1984 Kolff, D.H.A. (gen. ed.), Twee culturen: De Republiek en Java (Oriëntatiecursus Cultuurwetenschappen Open Universiteit), 8 vols, Heerlen. Kolff, D.H.A., “La ‘Nation’ Chrétienne à Surate au Debut du XVIIème Siècle”, in J.L. Miège (ed.), La Femme dans les Sociétés Coloniales (IHPOM, Univ. de Provence), Aix-en-Provence, pp. 7–16. Kolff, D.H.A., “India, een Parlementaire Democratie: echt, maar anders”, Grenzeloos, 5 (Nov./Dec.), pp. 14–5. Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia: c. 1300 to the Present”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 97, pp. 236–7. 1985 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van R.J. Moore, Escape from Empire”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 98, pp. 293–5. Kolff, D.H.A., “Indische Geschiedenis: een Overwonnen Contradictie?”, Groniek, 92, pp. 28–41. 1986 Bayly, C.A. and D.H.A. Kolff (eds.), Two Colonial Empires: Comparative Essays on the History of India and Indonesia in the Nineteenth Century, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. Kolff, D.H.A., “Administrative Tradition and the Dilemma of Colonial Rule: An Example of the Early 1830s”, in Bayly and Kolff (see above), pp. 95–109. Fasseur, C. and D.H.A. Kolff, “Some Remarks on the Development of Colonial Bureaucracies in India and Indonesia”, Itinerario, 10,1, pp. 31–55. 1987 Kolff, D.H.A., “Geweld en Geweldloosheid: de twee Gezichten van India”, Reflector (Feb.), pp. 226–31. Kolff, D.H.A., “De Dekolonisatie van Brits-Indië: Rijksreconstructie en Dorpsopbouw”, Spiegel Historiael, 22, pp. 320–6. Kolff, D.H.A., “Historiografie in Zuid-Azië: Een geval van late bloei”, in R.B. van de Weijer, P.G.B. Thissen and R. Schönberger (eds.), Tussen traditie en wetenschap: Geschiedbeoefening in niet-westerse culturen, Nijmegen: Stichting Annales Noviomagenses Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, pp. 113–131. 1988 Houben, V.J.H. and D.H.A. Kolff, “Between Empire Building and State Formation: Official Elites in Java and Mughal India”, Itinerario 12,1, pp. 165–94. Kolff, D.H.A., “History and Indology at Leiden University”, South Asia Newsletter, 2 (Dec.), pp. 9–10.
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1989 Kolff, D.H.A., “De wijzen uit het Oosten waren woestijnhandelaren”, NRC-Handelsblad (Cultureel Supplement), 6 January. Kolff, D.H.A., and L.G. Dalhuisen, “Mahatma Gandhi en de dekolonisatie van Brits Indië”, in Speelfilm en Geschiedenis: Congresverslag, Rotterdam Erasmus Universiteit, April 1988, Amsterdam, pp. 32–3. Kolff, D.H.A., “Huizinga’s Dissertation and the ‘Stemmingen’ of the Literary Movement of the Eighties”, in W. Otterspeer (ed.), Leiden Oriental Connections 1850– 1940, Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne: E.J. Brill, pp. 141–52. Kolff, D.H.A., “The End of an Ancien Regime: Colonial War in India, 1798–1818”, in J.A. de Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds.), Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa (Comparative Studies in Overseas History, 8), Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne: E.J. Brill, pp. 22–49. Kolff, D.H.A., “Huizinga’s proefschrift en de stemmingen van Tachtig”, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 104, pp. 380–92. Kolff, D.H.A., “Op zoek naar ‘root-paradigms’ in de Indische beschaving”, in H.J.M. Claessen (eds.), Hulp of hindernis? Het spanningsveld tussen model en werkelijkheid (ICA Publicatie 88), Rijksuniversiteit Leiden: Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen, pp. 131–53. 1990 Kolff, D.H.A., Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: the Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [paperback ed. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002] 1991 Kolff, D.H.A., “India: het einde van een beproefde consensus”, Jason, 16 (April), pp. 22–6. Kolff, D.H.A., “De hartstochtelijke nadruk op het individu leeft nog steeds in India”, NRC-Handelsblad, 17 June. Dalhuisen, L.G., D.H.A. Kolff, and A.P.C. Vendel, Gandhi: Film en werkelijkheid (Bouwstenen voor intercultureel onderwijs, AV3), Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (Minderhedenstudies). Kolff, D.H.A., “Huizinga en de Vedisch-Brahmaanse religie: Zijn college als privaat-docent te Amsterdam in 1903–04”, in Hanneke van den Muyzenberg en Thomas de Bruijn (eds.), Waarom Sanskrit? Honderdvijfentwintig jaar Sanskrit in Nederland (Kern Institute Miscellanea 4), Leiden: Vereniging Vrienden van het Instituut Kern, pp. 64–73. Kolff, D.H.A., “Boekbespreking van L.M. van der Mey, Nehru’s droom voorbij: 1962 als keerpunt in India’s verhouding tot China”, Transaktie: Tijdschrift over de Wetenschap van Oorlog en Vrede, 20,4, pp. 405–7. Kolff, D.H.A., Een Brits-Indische omwandeling, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden: Inaugural Lecture. 1992 Kolff, D.H.A., “The Indian and the British Law Machines: Some Remarks on Law and Society in British India”, in W.J. Mommsen and J.A. de Moor (eds.), European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th- and 20thCentury Africa and Asia, Oxford, New York: Berg, pp. 201–35. Hoek, A.W. van der, D.H.A. Kolff, and M.S. Oort (eds.), Ritual, State and History in South Asia: Essays in Honour of J.C. Heesterman, Leiden, New York, Cologne: E.J. Brill. Kolff, D.H.A., “Huizinga and the Vedic-Brahmanic religion. His first series of lectures at the University of Amsterdam in 1903–04”, in A.W. van der Hoek et al. (see above), pp. 578–86.
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Kolff, D.H.A., “Zuid-Azië na 1945”, in D.F.J. Bosscher et al. (eds.), De Wereld na 1945, Utrecht: Het Spectrum/Aula, pp. 475–508. Kolff, D.H.A., “Een zware verkoudheid”, Mare, 17 December. Kolff, D.H.A., “A British Indian Circumambulation”, Itinerario, 16,2, pp. 85–100. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of R. Glazer and N. Glazer (eds.), Conflicting Images: India and the United States” Pacific Affairs, 65,2, pp. 270–1. 1993 Kolff, D.H.A., “De cultuur van het Mughal Rijk”, in Thomas van Maaren and Jan Weerdenburg (eds.), In grote lijnen: De oude culturen, Universiteit Utrecht: Bureau Studium Generale, pp. 77–90. Kolff, D.H.A., “Een Brits-Indische omwandeling”, De Gids, 156, pp. 635–45. 1994 Kolff, D.H.A., “Remarks on the Conference”, in Yamada Keiji (ed.), The Transfer of Science and Technology between Europe and Asia, 1780–1880 (International Symposium, 7), Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, pp. 9–14. 1995 Kolff, D.H.A., “Boerensoldaten in India”, in H.Ph. Vogel, H.W. Singor and J.A. de Moor (eds.), Een wereld in oorlog: Militaire geschiedenis in hoofdstukken, Utrecht: Het Spectrum, pp. 273–89. Kolff, D.H.A., “The Rajput of Ancient and Medieval North India: A WarriorAscetic”, in N.K. Singhi and Rajendra Joshi (eds.), Folk, Faith & Feudalism: Rajasthan Studies, Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat, pp. 257–94. 1996 Kolff, D.H.A., “Zuid-Azië”, in Doeko Bosscher et al. (eds.), De Wereld na 1945, 2nd ed., Utrecht: Het Spectrum/Aula, pp. 505–40. 1998 Kolff, D.H.A., “Waarom was er geen Multatuli in Brits-Indië?”, in Theo D’haen en Gerard Termorshuizen (eds.), De Geest van Multatuli: Proteststemmen in vroegere Europese koloniën (Semaian 17), Leiden University, pp. 233–44. Kolff, D.H.A., “De Indische Diaspora: Een historisch-culturele benadering”, in Piet Emmer en Herman Obdeijn (eds.), Het Paradijs is aan de overzijde: Internationale immigratie en grenzen, Utrecht: Jan van Arkel, pp. 67–82. Kolff, D.H.A., “A Warlord’s Fresh Attempt at Empire”, in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), The Mughal State 1526–1750 (Themes in Indian History, Oxford in India Readings), Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 75–114. 2000 Kolff, D.H.A., “Aziatische, Afrikaanse en Amerindsiche talen en culturen (het “nietwesten”), in H.J. de Jonge and W. Otterspeer (eds.), Altijd een vonk of twee: De Universiteit Leiden van 1975 tot 2000, Leiden: Universitaire Pers, pp. 59–65. 2001 Gommans, Jos J.L., and Dirk H.A. Kolff (eds.), Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia, 1000 –1800, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gommans, Jos J.L. and Kolff, Dirk H.A., “Introduction”, in Gommans and Kolff (see above), pp. 1–42.
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Kolff, Dirk H.A., “The Polity and the Peasantry”, in Gommans and Kolff (see above), pp. 202–31. Kolff, D.H.A., “De bajonet erin! Een kleine oorlog in Brits-Indië”, in Arend Huussen, Janny de Jong, and Gé Prince (eds.), Cultuurcontacten: Ontmoetingen tussen culturen in historisch perspectief (Historische Studies IV), Groningen, pp. 123–36. Kolff, D.H.A., “Schilderijen van Rameshwar Singh: Kennismaking met een Indiaas kunstenaar”, Beeldaspecten 13, 4/5 (May), pp. 12–14. Kolff, D.H.A., “Review of Ahuja Ravi, Die Erzeugung kolonialer Staatlichkeit und das Problem der Arbeit”, International Review of Social History, 46,2, pp. 280–1. Kolff, D.H.A., “Jacob Haafner’s Journey in a Palanquin: A Passionate Farewell from a Colonial Ancien Régime”, in Dirk W. Lönne (ed.), Tohfa-e-dil. Festschrift Helmut Nespital, Vol. 2: Kulturwissenschaften, Reinbek: Verlag für Orientalische Fachpublikationen, pp. 727–48. 2002 Kolff, Dirk, “De Engelse Oostindische Compagnie”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 115,4, pp. 544–65. Kolff, D.H.A., “Op zoek naar een passend geschiedbeeld: Boekbespreking van Barbara D. Metcalf en Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of India”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 115,4, pp. 586–8.
INDEX
Abd al-Khan, 89 Abd al-Lah, 160, 165, 169–70 Abdul Halim, 168 Abdul Kalam, 348, 351 Abid Ali Khan, 146 Abul Fazl, 24, 163, 170, 214 Aceh, 33, 50–1 Ackroyd, P., 243, 249 Adams, Maj., 143, 154, 157 Addiscombe Military College, 237 Adilshahs, 100–2 Adrichem, D. van, 56 Afghans, 23, 86, 95, 138, 159–65, 171, 176, 179–217, 339 (see also Pathans) Afghanistan, 23, 86, 175, 182, 190, 198, 204, 213, 215, 334, 337, 339, 346 Africa, 276, 319 Afridis, 183, 195, 201–2 Agra, 21, 39, 50, 56–7, 59–64, 199, 203 Aguado, 78 Ahmad Khan Bangash, 185–6, 188, 191, 193–5, 201–3, 205–8 Ahmad Shah Durrani, 203, 207, 339 Ahmadabad, 47, 60 Ain Khan Sarvani, 179 Ajmer, 263 Akbar, 24, 188, 214, 217, 265, 269, 275–6, 338 Ala al-Din Khalji, 334 Alam Khan, 148, 150 Alavi, S., 12, 195 Albert, L., 307 Ali Muhammad Khan Rohilla, 204 Alivardi Khan, 120 Allahabad, 163, 185–6, 188, 200–2, 204 Allen, B., 233 Almas Ali Khan, 210–3 Alva, Conde de, 76, 87 Amar Singh, 279–82 Amber, 282 Americans (USA), 251–3, 261, 268–9, 282, 289, 292, 296, 303, 316, 346, 348–50
American Revolution, 296 Amethi, 201, 205 Amin Beg, 58 Amyatt, 146, 154 Anderson, B., 302 Andorra, 311 Angkor, 330 Anjapur, 98 Arabs, 31, 35, 38, 97, 171, 187, 260 Arabian Sea, 105 Arasaratnam, S., 48, 54 Arathoon, 138, 150, 154, 156–7 Arba Naik, 98–9 Armenians, 22, 133–8, 140, 143, 146, 152–5 artillery, 27, 106, 137–8, 140, 147, 150, 237, 241, 332, 335–9, 344, 351 Arya, 26, 277, 326–7, 329, 331 Asad al-Lah Khan, 149–50, 152 Asaf al-Daula, 208 Asaf Khan, 56, 59, 63 Ashoka, 259, 331–2 Assam, 146 Assolna, 88 a≤vamedha, 320–30 Aurangzeb, 40, 55, 179 Austen, J., 264 Australians, 233–4, 308 Ava, 44 Awadh, 20–1, 23, 53–4, 56, 124, 160, 163–5, 167–8, 184, 186, 194, 198, 201–3, 206, 208–13, 215–6 Ayodhya, 163–4, 223–5, 227 Azad Khan, 88 Azam Khan, 60 Baak, J., 125–6, 129–30 Babhoji, 94 Babur, 164–5, 181, 217, 332, 336–7, 339–40 Bachgotis, 159, 164–5, 169–70, 174, 178 Baghdad, 215 Baghelas, 161, 163, 165, 167, 170, 174 Bagstock, Maj., 249 Baizis, 181 Baksariyas, 8
360
Balaji Rao, 76 Balasore, 128 Balochistan, 176 Balwant Singh, 202 Balzac, H. de, 264 Bamtelas, 197 Bandaris, 80 Bangalore, 317, 321 Bangash, 23–4, 179–216 Bangash (Valley), 179, 181–4 Bangladesh, 117, 305, 346–7 Bannu, 181 Banquibazar, 120, 124, 130 Banten, 126 Bapoji Pant, 98–9 Barabanki, 164 Barani, Zia al-Din, 173 Barath Ram Nathji, 279 Barbak Shah, 163–4, 166–7, 169, 175, 177 Bardes, 72, 76, 78, 80, 83, 85, 88, 95–6, 99 Barendse, R., 19, 21, 69 Barid Khan Bahadur, 86 Barkat Ali, 156 Barnagul, 118 Barnes, J., 316 Bassein, 73, 76–8, 81–2, 86 Batavia, 22, 51, 56, 58, 108–13, 118–27, 129–31 Bath, 236 Baudrillar, J., 317, 320–1 Bauman, Z., 288–91, 294, 299, 316 Bayana, 44, 53, 162, 166 Bayazid Biyat, 176 Bayly, C., 12 Beadnell, Mr., 241 Bedara, 117, 128, 155 Bednore, 265 Belkhana, 228–9 Benares, 169, 185, 198, 202, 219, 221–5, 228 Bengal, 15, 22–3, 25, 41, 47–8, 52–5, 72, 87, 117–58, 177, 213, 233–4, 236, 239–40, 242, 244, 247, 252, 274–5, 301, 303, 330, 347 Benjamin, W., 316 Bentinck, Lord, 268 Bento, J., 99 Berlin Wall, 298 Bes, L., 67 Betavà, 217 Betia, 147 Bhadoi, 185
Bhaidachandra, 162–3, 167 bhakti, 24, 214, 218–20, 229 Bhàraticaµda, 217 Bharatpur, 193 Bhatta, 161–3, 170, 174 Bhattacharya, B., 19, 22–3, 133 Bhils, 88, 91, 97, 100, 256 Bhojpur, 8 Bhonsles, 76, 88, 91, 93 Bhopal, 215 Bh‰gu, 290 Bhure Khan (chela), 188 Bhutto, Z., 346–7 Bibi Sahiba, 185–7, 192, 197, 201 Bicholim, 21, 74, 77, 85, 96, 99, 103 Bihar, 8, 117, 139, 145, 154, 160–1, 170–2, 213 Bijlert, V. van, 26, 283 Bintang, 33 Bìra, 221–8 Bìrabhadra, 223–5, 228–9 Bìramsiµha, 217, 221 Birbhan-Virabhanu, 163 Birbhum, 148 Bird, R., 16 Bisdom, A., 117, 119, 122–7, 129–30 Bissau, 251 Bohras, 86 Bolan Pass, 337 Bombay, 34, 80, 82, 85, 87, 255 Boulogne, 241 Boxer, Ch., 123 Brackenbury, J., 237, 240 Brahmà, 221, 290 Brahmà Sanaka, 290 brahmans, 46, 78–9, 88, 94, 96, 227, 230–2, 242, 272 n. 41, 274, 311 Braj, 24, 218, 232 Brewer, J., 71 Bristol, 233 British, 8–9, 12–8, 24–7, 39, 46, 65–6, 69–70, 73, 87, 120, 123, 133, 136, 194, 208–13, 216, 233, 235, 237, 241–6, 249, 251–2, 256, 259, 262, 265–6, 268, 270–3, 275, 278–81, 295, 305, 316, 331, 339–40, 342–6 (see also English and Scots) Britons, 267, 274 Broome, A., 143 Brouwer, J., 26, 307 Bruggen, J. van der, 112, 114 Bryant, G., 87 Buckingham, J., 269–71 Buddhism, 30, 297, 304, 332
Bundela, 24, 189, 217–32 Bundelkhand, 7–9, 13–4, 24–5, 180, 189, 196–7, 200–1, 217–32, 256 Burdett-Coutts, A., 235–41, 246–7 Burgundy, 340 Burhanpur, 61 Burke, E., 267 Burma, 44, 344–5 Butto Savant, 98 Buxar, 123 Byron, Lord, 263–4, 268, 271 Calangute, 78 Calcutta, 24–6, 34, 39, 118, 120, 126, 135, 145–6, 157–8, 234, 243–4, 246, 248, 252, 255, 257, 269–70, 292 Calicut, 29 Calvinism, 296 Cambodia, 330 Cambridge, 6, 14, 237 Candal, 80, 85, 88, 92 Candela, 217, 222 Candràvara, 228 Carter, R., 248 caste, 8–10, 17, 46, 78, 80, 93, 98–9, 164, 170, 189, 191, 215, 242, 271–2, 282, 310–11, 332 Catholic, 69, 80–2, 84, 86–8, 95, 102, 311 Caucasus, 275 Cave Browne, J., 247 Central Asia, 10, 31, 39, 41, 204, 275, 327, 334 Ceylon, 22, 73, 107, 113–5, 126 Chaldiran, 336–7 Champanagar, 150 Chanderi, 174, 176 Chandernagore, 119, 128, 136 Chandra Parbhu, 87–9 Chandragupta Maurya, 331 Chardos, 78, 93 chariots, 26–7, 325–31, 333, 338, 344 Charles the Bold, 336, 340 Charnoe, 126 Chatrasàla, 218 Chatterjee, P., 301–5 Chattopadhyay, B., 23, 134, 139–42 Chauhans, 263 Chaul, 80–2, 103 Chaund, 159–162, 166, 170–3 Chausa, 163 chelas, 24, 180, 184, 186–95, 197–201, 205, 207–8, 210, 214–6
361
Cheribon, 118 Chinese (China), 30–1, 33, 144, 347–8 Chinsura, 47, 117–8, 120, 122, 125–30, 155 Chitor, 265, 282 Cholas, 330 Christian, 29, 81, 94, 297 Chunar, 160–1 Clark, G., 256 Clinton, B., 349 Clive, R., 120, 123, 125–6, 129, 252, 258, 278 Cochin, 47, 80, 105–6, 111, 113–4 Coculim, 74 Cohn, B., 10–1 n. 24 Coimbra, 87 Colachel, 21, 105–10, 113–4 Cologne, 317 Columbus, C., 29 Congress Party, 281, 305 Conquistas Novas, 74–9, 87, 99 Conrad, J., 34 Corfield, W., 248 Coromandel, 32, 40, 48, 54, 79, 121, 126–7 Cotton, E., 156 Couto, D. de, 73 Cromwellian Revolution, 296 Crooke, W., 165 Cultural Studies, 26, 295–7 Cunàra, 228 Curzon, Lord, 273, 277 Dadaism, 314 Daim Khan (chela), 188 Dalamau, 167–8 Dalani Begam, 141–2 Dalpat Sah, 178 Dalpat Singh (Raja), 177–8 Daman, 51, 81–2, 85–6, 90 Dàna, 221 Danapur (also Dinapore), 175 Danish, 118 Dara Shukoh, 337 Dariabad, 163, 167 Darling, M., 25 Dasgupta, A., 48 Dastagool, 135 Daulat Rao Scindia, 257 Daulatabad, 63 Deccan, 39–40, 92, 179–80, 196–7, 200, 204, 217, 271 Delhi (Dehli), 14, 27, 35, 39, 50, 101, 159, 162, 167, 173, 181, 193,
362
198–9, 201, 203–5, 213–4, 217–8, 244, 254, 256, 273, 332, 334–6, 339 Delhi Sultanate, 27, 213–4, 332, 334–5 Dewey, C., 16, 278 n. 59 Dhaka, 117–8, 146 dharma, 6, 46, 218, 221–2, 231, 328 Dickens, A., 234, 245 Dickens, Ch., 24–5, 233–49 Dickens, Ch. ( jr), 233, 236, 241, 247 Dickens, F., 234, 247 Dickens, H., 233 Dickens, P., 234 Dickens, S., 234 Dickens, W., 24–5, 233–49, 264 Digby, S., 23, 159 Dilir Himmat Khan Bangash (also Muzaffar Jang), 185, 194–5, 207–8, 216 Dilir Khan (chela), 189, 216 Dirks, N., 10 n. 24, 277 n. 57 Disraeli, B., 254, 273 Diu, 51, 86 Douglas, M., 319–20 Douwes Dekker, E. (also Multatuli), 16 Dulba Naik, 92, 101 Dumont, L., 46, 320 Dungara Naik, 92 Dupleix, J., 78, 342 Durranis, 203–4, 206–7, 213, 215, 339 Dutch (East India Company, Republic, Holland, Netherlands), 3, 7, 13–6, 20–2, 29, 33, 40, 44, 47–70, 73–4, 78, 80, 105–32, 135, 138, 147, 155, 296, 317 Eastwick, W., 238, 246 Eaton, R., 20, 41–2 Ega, Conde de, 76, 79, 83, 90–2 Egypt, 292, 327, 336, 343 elephants, 26–7, 65, 161, 180, 192, 196–7, 201, 205–6, 211, 282, 325, 329–32, 336, 338, 344, 351 Eliot, G., 264 Ellis, W., 147–8, 156 Emerson, 14 English (East India Company; England), 21–5, 29, 49, 51, 54–6, 63–4, 69–74, 79 –80, 82–3, 85, 93, 103, 117–8, 120–5, 127–30, 133–58, 206, 233–6, 238–40, 242–4, 246, 248, 253–4, 258, 264, 268, 270–2, 276, 295–6, 316, 322 (see also British)
Enlightenment, 253, 263–4, 291, 298, 303, 307, 313–4 Erasmus, 5 Erivan, 135, 336 Essoji Raja Pattacar, 85 Estado da Índia, 21, 49, 69–104 Etawah, 228 Eurocentrism, 280, 291–2 Europeans (Europe), 3–4, 10, 14–7, 19–21, 26, 30, 32–3, 35, 44–5, 47, 52–6, 69–71, 74–9, 81, 83, 85–6, 90–1, 93, 102, 105, 117–8, 121, 124, 126, 128–30, 133, 136–40, 143–4, 146, 152, 158, 242, 259–60, 262, 268–9, 271, 274, 282–3, 286, 289, 291–3, 298–301, 303, 307–9, 311–3, 315–6, 319–20, 323, 336–7, 340–1 Faizabad, 164 Fakhr al-Daula (chela), 194, 207–8, 216 Fakir Muhammad Khan, 88 Falck, A., 117 Falck, J., 117 Falta, 126 Farah, 175 Farhat Ali, 156 Farmulis, 163–4, 167, 169 Farrukhabad, 23–4, 179–216 Farrukhsiyar, 196–7, 204 Fasseur, C., 14 Fatehgarh, 203, 209 feudalism, 27, 261–3, 333, 335 Fido, M., 235 Firishta, 168 Flaubert, 264 Forster, E., 16 Fort St. David, 121, 130 Fort William, 118, 129, 145, 154, 157, 247–8 Foucault, M., 259 French (France), 74, 86, 103, 106, 113, 118, 120–1, 123–4, 129–30, 143, 240, 289, 296, 342 French Revolution, 289, 296 Fukuyama, F., 286 n. 7, 298 fundamentalism, 297–8, 305 Furber, H., 123 Furnivall, J., 14, 16 Gaastra, F., 123 Gad’s Hill, 241, 246 Gaharavàras, 221–32 Gakbur Sarvani, 167
Galenfels, Dom F. de, 80 Gama, V. da, 29 Gandhi, I., 347–8 Gandhi, M., 275–6, 280, 297 Ganesha Bhai Raja, 97–8 Ganesha Rana, 85 Ganga (also Ganges), 23, 39, 160–4, 166–7, 169, 172, 174–5, 197, 201, 203, 223–4 Garcia de Sta. Theresa, D. de, 84 Garha-Katanga, 177 Ga‰hakuµ∂àra, 217 Gaur, 177 Geleynssen de Jongh, W., 56, 63–4, 67 Gellner, E., 283, 293, 299–300 Geneva Republic, 269 Gentil, J.-B., 153–4 Gentlemen XVII, 56, 121, 129 George IV, 270 Georgina, 247 German, 271, 289, 316 Ghats, 88, 118 Ghazipur, 169 Ghaznavids, 23, 213 Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai, 136, 140, 142–3, 148–51, 153, 156–7 Ghurids, 23–4, 213 Gibbon, E., 262 Giddens, A., 286–8, 291, 294 Girnar, 259 globalisation, 298 Goa, 21, 49, 51, 72, 74, 76, 78–81, 84–6, 88, 92–9, 102, 111, 121 Goga, 86 Gomati, 168–70 Gommans, J., 1–2, 19, 23–4, 67, 179 Gopala Naik, 86 Gore Làla (Làla Kavi), 218, 225–8 Govind Rao, 74 Grant, M., 225 Grant, S., 225 Greeks (Greece), 253, 260, 263, 267–72, 328 Grierson, G., 10 Gujarat, 20, 47–50, 53–5, 60, 176, 271 Gulbadam Begam, 163 Gurgin Khan, 23, 133–44, 146–7, 150–1, 153–8 Gustavus Adolphus, 341–2 Gwalior, 162, 166 Hackert, J., 21–2, 105–15 Hafiz Rahmat Khan, 203, 206
363
Haidar Ali, 79, 92 Haldighati, 268, 271, 275–6 Hallam, H., 261–2, 267 Hanut Singh, 281 Hapsburgs, 71, 341 Haqiqat Khan, 47 Harappa, 326 Hari≤candra, 228–9 Hastings, Lord, 257 Hastings, W., 145, 158, 212, 260 Hathras, 193 Hay, 146, 148, 154 Heatley, M., 253 Heatley, P., 252–4, 256 Heatly, A., 253 Heesterman, J., 5, 11, 16, 19–20, 29, 310, 320 Hellenism, 31, 268–9, 271, 273 Herat, 175 Himalayas, 191, 203 Himmat Khan Bangash, 179 Hindi, 24, 218, 254, 322 Hindu(ism), 24, 30, 43, 63, 84–5, 92, 94, 99, 101, 162, 174, 177, 182, 191, 198, 214, 244, 276, 280, 297–8, 304–5, 311, 319, 330, 335 Hittites, 327 Hogendorp, G. van, 13–5 Holocaust, 289, 294 Hong Kong, 292 Hooghly, 135, 147 Hooghly (river), 118, 126, 128 horses, 26, 65, 97, 149, 153, 168, 196–8, 201–2, 204–6, 212, 325–9, 331–8, 341, 351 Hourani, A.H., 36 n. 11 Hugo, V., 264 Huizinga, J., 3–5, 10, 19 Humayun, 163, 168, 217 Hume, D., 262 Huntington, S., 298 Husain Shah Sharqi, 160, 170–2, 177–8. Hyderabad, 317 Hyksos, 327 Ibrahim Adil Shah Qazi, 102 Ibrahim Khan, 88, 91–2, 96 Ibrahim Lodi, 217, 332 Ilyas Shah, 177 Imam Khan Bangash, 186 Imhoff, G. van, 119 Inchbird, J., 80–2
364
Indian Ocean, 19, 29–30, 33, 45–6, 69, 71, 133 Indonesia, 13–6, 32, 42, 50, 57, 118 Indus, 25, 39, 181, 256, 326 internet, 26, 258, 308–9, 317, 321–3 Inverness, 225 Iranis, 201, 204, 213 (see also Persians) Irrawaddy, 44 Irvine, W., 185, 188 Isami, 171 Isfahan, 135, 140 Islam, 19–20, 24, 29–31, 34–6, 40–3, 45, 165, 169, 175, 181, 187, 191, 193, 208, 214, 298, 305, 333, 346–7, 350 Islam Khan (chela), 193 Islington, 253 Ismail Khan, 95 Jacob, H. s’, 19, 22, 48, 117 Jafar Khan, 61 Jagaseth Fatehchand, 156 Jagdish Patvardan, 100 Jahandar Shah, 196 Jahangir, 40, 217, 220 Jai Narayan Vyas, 281 Jaipur, 251, 279–81, 337 Jaiselmer, 282 Jambi, 33 Jammu, 350 Jamuna, 26, 165, 167, 217, 228, 256 Janissaries, 340–1 Japan, 47, 55, 282 Jaswant Singh (Raja), 185 Jats, 203, 272, 281 Java, 15–6, 37, 44, 73, 118 Jawhar, 163 Jawnpur, 23, 159–70, 172, 174–5, 177–8, 228 Jayacandra, 228–9 Jefferson, Th., 256 Jellyby, Mrs., 249 Jhansi, 7, 13, 217 Jhusi Prayag, 161–3 Jinnah, M., 345 Jodhpur, 24, 229, 279, 281–2 Joga Hindu, 162 Johnson, E., 235 Johore, 33 Jones, W., 258 n. 9, 260 Judaism, 297 JWKA, 159–78 Kabul, 179, 181, 198 Kaghzais, 181–4
Kakatiyas, 335 Kalpi, 167, 174–6 Kamgar Khan, 150, 152 Kamgar Khan Baluch, 202 Kampil, 200 Kanara, 79 Kanauj, 163, 223 Kangra, 170 Kannada, 322 Kanpur, 25, 167, 242, 244 Kantat, 170 Karamnasa, 163 Karana, 221–4 Kargil, 349–51 Karim Khan Zand, 215 Karlanis, 181–4 Karra, 162–3, 167 Kasganj, 193 Kashmir, 348–50 Kasim Khan Bangash, 185 Kasimbazar, 117–8, 122, 125 Kathiawad, 333 Katwa, 149, 152 Kayamkulam, 105 Keay, J., 259 Kejariwal, O., 258 Kelwa, 265 Kempe Gowda, 335 Kerala, 47–8, 73, 80 Ke≤avadàsa, 218–32 Ketelaar, J., 56 Khafi Khan, 52 Khajuraho, 218 Khan Jahan, 166 Khan Jahan Khan Lodi, 185 Khataks, 182 Khirilchis, 181 Khoja Anton, 147 Khoja Barsick Arathoon, 134–5, 143, 147 Khoja Gregory (see Gurgin Khan) Khoja Minas Elias, 135, 147 Khoja Petrus, 134–5, 138, 143, 147, 154 Khoqand, 215 Khorasan, 23, 213 Khudabanda Khan Bangash, 208 Khugianis, 181 Khwaja Bayazid Ansari, 179 Khyber Pass, 181 King, A., 291 Kipling, R., 16, 266, 277 Kistaba Rana, 85 Klerk de Reus, G., 122–3, 125 Kohat, 181
Kolff, D., 1–19, 23, 70, 73, 85, 188, 235, 242, 277–8 Kolff, G., 2 n. 4 Kolis, 90, 94, 98 Koller, H., 107–14 Konkan, 85, 88–9, 97–8, 100, 102 Kooiman, D., 24–5, 233 Kora, 167 Koraes, A., 260, 268 n. 34 Kottayam, 105 K‰ß»a, 218–21, 290–2 Kruijtzer, G., 67 kshatryas, 78, 92–3, 272 n. 41, 278 Kumbalghar, 282 Kunbis, 80–2 Kurram, 181 Ku≤a, 223–5, 227–8 Ku≤asthalì, 223 Ku≤avatì, 224–5, 227 Lahore, 47, 57, 63–4, 198–9, 348, 350 Lakshmi Naik, 98 Landars, 181 Landor, W., 236–7 Lannoy, M. de, 19, 21–2, 105 Lawrence, W., 276 Leask, W., 268 Leninist-Stalinist, 298 Leslorant, A., 21–2, 105–6, 113–5 Lewis, M., 256 liberalism, 267, 297 Lobha, 221 Loch, J., 235 Locke, J., 267 Lodis, 23, 159, 161–2, 164, 166, 168, 170–2, 174–5, 178, 185, 207, 320–1, 332 Lohanis, 167, 169 London, 17, 25, 121, 235–6, 239, 241–2, 251, 253, 255, 271, 276, 342, 344 Louisiana, 256 Lucknow, 25, 163–4, 169, 208–10, 242, 244–5 Lushington, 148 Lützen, 341 Lyall, A., 276 Lytton, Lord, 273 Macaulay, Th., 264 Machalì≤ahara, 228 Machilipatnam, 121 MacMunn, G., 274 Madhukara •àha, 217, 219 Madras, 32, 34, 120, 251, 276
365
Madurai, 335 Mahadaji Malik, 100 Maharana Bhim Singh, 254 Mahatab Rai, 155 (see also Seth brothers) Mahé, 113 Mahmud Khan Bangash, 206–7 Maitreya, A., 143, 151–2 n. 34 Mala Parbhu, 89 Malabar, 21–2, 35, 48, 105–15, 123–4 Malaccan peninsula, 32 Malay(sia), 37, 45, 50 Maldon, J., 249 Malik Ain Khan Bangash, 179 Malik Kafur, 334 Malik-Miris, 181 Malleson, G., 143, 157–8 Malwa, 174, 197, 200–1, 204, 257 mamlùks, 23–4, 187, 190, 195, 213–5 Man Singh, 280 Mandovi, 78–9 Mandu, 176 Manickulal Verma, 281 Mappilas, 35 Marathas, 12, 26, 76–80, 82, 85–8, 90, 93, 96–100, 103, 120, 197, 200–1, 203, 208, 252, 254, 256–7, 259, 268, 271, 339 Margar Johannes Khalanthar, 138–9, 143, 148–50, 152–4, 156–7 Martanda Varma, 105 Marxism, 288, 291, 296–8 Masih al-Zaman, 57–66 Mataram, 44, 118 Mathurà, 290–1 Mau ( Jhansi), 7–8, 13 Mau (Rashidabad), 179–80, 186, 190, 192–3, 196–7, 208 Maulana Masood Azhar, 350 Maurya, 27, 332 Mayapur, 128 McLuhan, M., 308 Mecca, 175–6 Mediterranean, 29–30, 36 Mehta, U., 267 Melaka, 32–3 Mello e Castro, Caetana de, 78–9 Mendonça Benvenido, J. de, 100 Menezes da Silva, J., 90 Meos, 256 Mercer, G., 256 Mesopotamia, 327 Mewar, 25, 252, 254–7, 259, 262, 265–6, 268–72, 275–6, 280 Micawber, Mr., 233
366
Michaels, E., 308 Middle East, 29–31, 38–9, 53, 57, 187, 214 Mill, J., 258 n. 9, 266 Millar, J., 262 Mir Badr al-Din, 149–50 Mir Haibat al-Lah, 148–50 Mir Himmat Ali, 150 Mir Jafar, 22, 122, 124–5, 130, 133, 136, 140, 141 n. 31, 154–5, 157–8 Mir Mahdi Khan, 146, 148 Mir Musa, 62–4 Mir Nasser, 148–9 Mir Qasim, 22–3, 124, 133–58 Mir Saiyid Khan, 173 Mir Sher Ali Khan, 146, 149 Miran (Prince), 122, 124, 130 Mirza Khan (Nawab), 179 Mirza Mahmud, 58 Mirzapur, 219, 228–9, 283 Mitanni, 327 modernity, 5, 26, 102, 251, 283–323 Mohan Lal Sukhadia, 281 Mohan Singh Kanota, 282 Moluccas, 49–50, 52 Mombasa, 292 Monghyr, 23, 136–7, 146–8, 153–6, 158 Montaigne, M. de, 5 Montesquieu, Ch. de, 262 Moore, T., 264–5 Moreland, W., 25, 48, 57 Mossel, J., 119, 121, 123–4, 129–30 Mow, 147 Mubarak Khan Nohani, 161–3, 166–7 Mughals, 6–7, 9–13, 15, 20–1, 24, 26–7, 33, 35, 38, 40, 43–4, 47–67, 73, 99, 101–3, 120, 124, 126, 128, 134, 144, 146, 148, 151–3, 171, 174, 179–81, 187, 189, 195–99, 204–5, 207–8, 214, 216–7, 220, 254, 256, 265, 268–9, 271–3, 275, 277–9, 280, 332, 336–9, 341 Muhabbad Khan, 86 Muhammad Ali, 156 Muhammad Ali Beg, 146 Muhammad Amin Khan (also Itimad al-Daula), 204 Muhammad Farmuli “Kala Pahar”, 163–4, 167 Muhammad Ghùrì, 228 Muhammad Kabir, 160–1, 163, 166–7, 170–3
Muhammad Khan Bangash, 179–80, 182, 185, 187–91, 194–7, 200–1, 204–5, 216 Muhammad Khan Sur, 170 Muhammad Naqi Khan, 150 Muhammad Taqi Khan, 137 Muhammad Wali al-Lah, 182–3 Murshidabad, 118, 120, 129, 144, 149, 156 Muscat, 215 Musharraf, 348–51 Mushtaqi, 159–60, 162, 165–74 Muyan Nizam, 172 Mylapur, 79 Mysore, 79, 92, 215, 317, 321 Nadir Shah, 86, 205 Nadora, 85 Nagapattinam, 121, 126 Nagarkot, 170 Nagoa, 80 Nagua, 101 Najaf Khan (Mirza), 150, 152 Najib al-Daula, 207 Nakhna, 165, 167 Nana Ksatri, 96 Napoleon Bonaparte, 268 Narasimha Rao, 348 Narhat-Simai, 149–50 Nasir Khan, 174 naukar, 10, 19, 24, 173, 179–80, 195–6, 200, 207, 212, 214–6 Nawal Rai, 202 Nawaz Sharif, 348–50 Nazis, 289, 297 Nehru, J., 281, 345 Nepal, 147–8, 151 Nerva, 95 New Julfa, 135 New York, 253 Newport (Rhode Island), 225 Niknam Khan (chela), 192 Nile, 326 Nirodbhushan Roy, 168, 170 Nixon, R., 347 Nizam al-Din Ahmad, 159–160, 162–72 Nizam al-Mulk, 200, 204 Nobit Roy, 146 Noronha, Dom A. de, 79, 82, 88, 92 North Korea, 348 nuclear bomb, 27, 346–51 Nunes Pintado, M., 83
Ochterlony, D., 254, 255 n. 4, 256, 257 n. 8, 266, 270 Ogerdias, C., 120 Opium Society, 22, 119, 131 Orakzais, 181–2 O‰chà, 217–9, 227 Orissa, 47, 120, 134, 139, 330 Ostend Company, 121 Ottomans, 268–9, 272, 336 Oxford, 237, 260 Paµcama, 225–8 Pakistan, 27, 305, 343–51 Palembang, 118 Panchmahal, 147 Panipat, 206, 336, 339 Panjab, 15, 164, 203, 344–6 Pannà, 218 Para≤uràma, 290 Paris, 268, 317 Pathans, 86–7, 90, 183–4, 187, 190, 193, 195, 201–2, 205–6, 208–9, 211, 216 (see also Afghans) Patna, 23, 117–8, 121, 128, 138, 142, 146–8, 153, 155–6, 175 Pegu, 44 Pelsaert, F., 7, 9, 13, 34, 40, 67 Perlin, F., 55 Persians, 10, 23, 65, 96, 135, 171, 176, 187, 189, 204–5, 215, 218, 260, 268, 271–2, 334, 336 (see also Iranis) Persian Gulf, 334 Peru, 308 Peshawar, 181 Peshwa, 102, 257 Pilakhna, 167 Pilibhit, 169 Pindar, 320 Pindaris, 97 Plassey, 22, 120, 123, 129, 135, 144–5, 155–6, 252 Ponda, 74, 79, 87, 91, 95, 98–101 Pope, 308 Portuguese (Portugal), 21, 29, 32–3, 49–51, 56, 69–104 postmodernity, 5, 18, 286, 289–92, 298, 321 Praças do Norte, 73–85 Prakash, O., 1–2, 48, 52–4, 118, 123 Prataparudra, 335 Prinsep, J., 259 Protestant, 80, 296
367
Pulamar Naik, 100 Pune, 101, 249 Purnia, 146, 149 Putta, 265, 267 Qaim Khan Bangash, 185–6, 188, 201, 204–6 Qaimganj, 197 Qais, 183 Qandahar, 175, 181 Quelni, 101 Quilon, 106, 108 Rachol, 83 Raghubir Singh, 251 Ragoji Savant, 90, 101 Ragunat Pant, 77, 103 Raj Ballabh, 146 Raja Ganesh, 177 Rajaraja, 330 Rajasthan (also Rajputana), 12, 25, 229, 251–82 Rajmahal Hills, 137 Rajputs, 24, 160–1, 165, 172, 174, 183, 189–90, 200, 216, 229, 251–2, 254, 257, 264–70, 272–82, 337 Ram Narayan, 146 Rama Naik, 100 Ràma •àha, 217 Rama( ji) Sinay, 86, 96–7 Ràma, 218–232 Ràmacaµdra, 221, 230 Rana Pratap, 268, 275–6, 280 Rangamati, 146 Rangpur, 146 Rathores, 24, 229, 279 Ravara, 85 Raymond, M., 137 Reformation, 296 Reinhardt, W. (see Sumroo) Rieu, Ch., 241 Rijtel, 106 Rio de Janeiro, 292 Roberts, Lord, 274 Rodriguês, C., 79 Roh, 179, 182 Rohilkhand, 180, 190, 198, 200–1, 203–4, 212–3, 215 Rohillas, 138, 182–4, 201, 203–8, 212–3 Romans, 29, 35, 37–8, 259–60 Roshaniyya, 179, 181 Rothermund, D., 26–7, 325
368
Roussel, J.-B., 126, 128 Rudawli, 163–6, 176 Rudolph, L. and S., 25–6, 251 Rudrapratàpa, 217 Rukn al-Din, 164–5 Russia, 271, 296, 321 Russian Revolution, 296 Rustam Khan Afridi, 202 Sa"ad al-Lah Khan, 203 Sada Shivaji Khamat, 90 Safavids, 336 Safdar Jang, 201–4 Safed Koh, 181 Said, E., 259, 299 Saidabad, 135 Saiyid Abd al-Lah Khan, 196–7 Saiyid Jalal Bukhari, 146 Saiyid Kasim, 86 Saiyid Muhammad Khan, 149 Saiyid Muhammad Mahdi Jawnpuri, 174–8 Salcete, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 87, 99 Sanà∂hyas, 290–1 Sanaka, 290 Sandomil, Conde de, 79 Sanskrit, 4, 220, 232, 254, 260, 322, 327–9 Santen, H. van, 13, 19–21, 47 Sart, M., 113–4 Sarvanis, 164–5, 167, 172, 179, 183 Satara, 101 Satroji Raja, 77, 93, 97, 101 Saurashtra, 252 Savant, 76, 88, 90–101 Savantvad, 76–7, 89, 91, 96–7, 99–101 Sawyer, B., 233 Saxony, 341 Sazoa, M. de, 79, 93 Schmitz, J., 107 Schokker, G., 23–4, 217 Scots (Scotland), 253, 263–4, 267 Scott, W., 263–4 Scythians, 267–274 Seleukos Nikator, 331 Selim I, 336–7 sepoys, 6–8, 12, 21, 74–5, 77, 82, 84–99, 128 Serampore, 118 Seth brothers, 155–8 Seth, M., 135, 139, 144 Shah Dilawar, 175 Shah Ismail, 336
Shah Jahan, 21, 47, 56, 65, 67, 185 Shah Jalal, 41, 43 Shahab al-Din, 156 Shahabad, 164–6 Shahpur-Akbarpur, 188 Shahu Bhonsle, 76, 93 Shaikh Abd al-Quddus Gangohi, 164–7, 172 Shaikh Abd al-Rahman, 90 Shaikh Daud, 86 Shaikh Ismail, 99 Shaikh Murtuza, 99 Shamshabad, 179, 188, 192–3, 200 Shastri, L. Bahadur, 347 Shelley, P., 264, 268 Sher Khan Nohani, 162 Sher Shah Sur, 8, 217 Shiism, 181, 208–9, 213 Shore, F., 17–8 shudras, 272 n. 41 Shuja al-Daula, 206–8 Siersma, R., 106, 111 Sikandar Lodi (Sultan), 23, 159, 162–78 Sikhs, 276, 344–5 Sind, 176 Singapore, 292 Sion, 83 Sir Pratap Singh, 279 Siraj al-Daula, 22, 120, 133, 140, 142–3 •iva, 219 Sladen, D., 251 slavery, 23–4, 74, 149, 179–81, 184–5, 187, 190–1, 194–5, 206–7, 213–6, 332–5 (see also mamlùks, chelas, Janissaries) Sleeman, 16 Smith, A., 263 socialism, 7, 295–7 Son, 160–1 Southampton, 241 Southeast Asia, 19, 30–1, 36, 39, 44–5, 345 Soviet Union, 346–7, 349 Spanish (Spain), 298 n. 48, 311, 40 Sparta, 265, 268, 271–2 Srinagar, 350 St. John’s Wood, 236 Stael, Mme de, 265 Stanhope, L., 270–1 Steengaard, N., 32 n. 5 Stein van Gollenesse, J., 21, 106–15 Stokes, E., 6, 16
Strachey, R., 256 Streusand, D., 13 Subrahmanyam, S., 48, 54 Suez, 243, 344 Sufi, 18, 20, 23–4, 41–2, 160, 164, 166, 171, 175, 198, 214 Sulaiman Mountains, 181 Sultan Buhlul Lodi, 164, 173, 175, 178 Sultanpur, 164–6, 169–70, 178 Sumatra, 32, 118 Sumroo, 139, 143, 149–50, 152, 155 Sunda, 76, 80, 87, 96, 100 Sura Savant, 98 Surat, 21, 33–4, 47, 49–52, 54–66, 117, 144, 305 Surrey, 241 Surs, 8, 159, 170, 217 Suryavarman I, 330 Suti, 150, 152 Swarupchand, 155 (see also Seth brothers) Swiss (Switserland), 271, 340 Sylhet, 41 Syria, 38, 327, 336 Taillefert, L., 119–20, 155 Taliban, 346 Tamilnadu, 47, 53 Tanjavur, 121 Taqi Khan, 148–9, 152 Tarai, 203 Tatar Khan Lodi, 172 television, 26, 285, 308–9, 317, 321–3 Telicherry, 80 Tennyson, A., 261 n. 17 Thackerey, W., 264 Thedens, J., 111 Therborn, G., 292 Thermopylae, 268, 271, 275–6 Thomason, J., 16 Thomaz, L., 69–70 Timur, 332 Tirumala Nayak, 335 Tocqueville, A. de, 251 Tod, J., 251–82 Tolstoy, L., 264 Toulmin, S., 5 n. 8 Toynbee, A., 315 Travancore, 21, 80, 105–8, 111–2, 114 Trollope, A., 264 Tulsidas, 17, 19
369
Turanis, 201, 204 Turis, 181 Turks, 23, 189, 213 Turko-Persia, 23–4, 187, 189–90, 213–4, 216 Tuticorin, 106, 109–10, 114 Udaipur, 252, 269, 281 Udhuanala, 143, 150, 152–3, 157 Ujjainiyas, 9, 165, 174 Umar Khan Sarvani, 164–5, 167 Usgao, 89, 91 Uspa, 77, 103 Uttar Pradesh, 23, 319 Uzbeks, 215, 337 vaishyas, 272 n. 41 Vajpajee, A., 348–50 Vàlmìki, 223–4 Vansittart, H., 145, 158 Vatican, 308 Vaudeville, Ch., 10 Vedànta, 221 Vernet, G., 122, 125–6, 129–30, 156 Veroda, 74 Vicente de Vidal, P., 77, 103 Victoria, 254, 273 Vijayanagara, 101, 334–5 Vindhyas, 224, 227 Vindhyàcala, 219 Vindhyavàsinì Devì, 218–9, 224–8 Vink, M., 123 Virji Vohra, 21, 49, 57–67 Viß»u, 218–9 Vitoba Naik, 98 Wandiwash, 123 Warangal, 335 Waugh, Capt., 254 Weber, M., 285 Wendel, F., 198–9 Willes, J., 209–13 Wills, W., 238 Wimbledon, 237, 240–1 Winius, G., 123 Wink, A., 11–2 Woodruff, Ph (also Ph. Mason), 252 Woolwich, 253 Wynne, Ch., 237 Yakut Khan (chela), 185, 194 Yasin Khan Ustazai Bangash, 180 yugas, 222–3, 290 Yusuf Khan, 90
370 Zabardast Khan, 77, 103 Zia ul-Haq, 347–8 Ziegler, N., 189, 277 n. 57 Zimbaulim, 74, 87, 100–1
Zinni, A., 349 Zulfiqar Khan (chela), 188 Zwaardecroon, H., 33
