What are the specific features of nationalist historiography concerning ancient India?

Many Indians, affected by nationalism, and some Europeans, took up an examination of colonial stereotypes virtually as a challenge from the second half of the 19th century. They did on the basis of detailed and meticulous research, which has created excellent traditions of devotion to facts and details and of reliance on primary sources in Indian historical discipline.

Indian historians tried to prove the falsity of colonial historical narrative on the basis of analysis of existing historical sources, as also the hunt for fresh sources. Of course, they also were moved by a feeling of-hurt national pride.

For decades, their work was confined to ancient and medieval periods. The professional historians did not take up the modern period though, as we shall see, the economists did, basically because of two reasons: (a) most of them were working in government or government-controlled schools and colleges, there was fear that any critique of colonialism would affect their careers; (b) they accepted the contemporary British historical view that scientific history must not deal with recent or contemporary period.

The Indian historians proclaimed the colonial notion of India’s tradition of spirituality as a mark of distinction and of India’s greatness and superiority over the West, especially in terms of ‘moral values’ as compared to the essentially ‘materialistic’ character of Western civilization. (Paradoxically, this formulation made an appeal to the Indians of middle classes who belonged to money lending and trading families who daily struggled for acquisition of material goods).

At the same time, they denied the Indians’ exclusive devotion to spirituality and stressed their prowess in administration and statecraft, empire building, diplomacy, taxation structure, and military organization, warfare, agrarian, industrial and commercial development.

Many historians discovered in India’s past diplomatic and political institutions analogous to those of contemporary Europe. They vehemently denied the notion of ancient Indian being inefficient in running a state. They hailed the discovery in the beginning of the 20th century of Arthashastra by Kautilya and said that it proved that

Indians were equally interested and proficient in administration, diplomacy and economic management by the state. Many glorified Kautilya and compared him with Machiavelli and Bismarck. Many also denied the dominant influence of religion on the state and asserted the latter’s secular character. They also contradicted the view that ancient Indian state was autocratic and despotic.

The Kings in ancient India dispensed justice to all, they said. Others refuted the view that Indian rulers did not keep in mind the aim of the welfare of the people. Some even asserted the strong presence of the popular element in the state and went even so far as to say that in many cases the political structure approached that of modem democracies. In any case, all of them argued that government was not irresponsible and capricious.

There were many limits on autocracy or the power of the rulers. There were many channels through which public opinion became effective. Some even argued that Indian monarchies were limited and often approached constitutional monarchy For example; the Mantri Parishad described by Kautilya was compared with the Privy Council of Britain. Above all, very often the existence of local self-governments was asserted and the example of democratically elected village panchayats was cited.

A few writers went so far as to talk of the existence of assemblies and parliaments and of the cabinet system, as under Chandra Gupta, Akbar and Shivaji. Quite often, the wide observance by the rulers of international law, especially in the case of war, was also pointed out.

They denied the charge that Indian rulers took recourse to arbitrary taxation and argued that a taxation system virtually analogous to that of a modern system of taxation prevailed. K.P. Jayaswal, a celebrated historian of the first quarter of the 20th century, took this entire approach to the extreme. In his Hindu Polity, published in 1915, he argued that the ancient Indian political system was either republican or that of constitutional monarchy. He concluded: ‘The constitutional progress made by the Hindus has probably not been equaled, much less surpassed, by any polity of antiquity.’ (This was to counter the European view that Greece was the home of democracy).

Basically, the nationalist approach was to assert that anything that was politically positive in the West had already existed in India. Thus R. C. Maunder wrote in his Corporate Life in Ancient India that institutions ‘which we are accustomed to look upon as of western growth had also flourished in India long ago.’ Thus, interestingly, the value structure of the west was accepted. It is not ancient Indian political institutions which were declared to be, on the whole, greater, but western institutions which were accepted as greater and then found to have existed in ancient India.

Colonial historians stressed that Indians were always divided by religion, region, language, and caste, that it was colonialism alone which unified them, and that their unity would disappear if colonial rule disappeared. This also meant that Indians lacked a sense of patriotism and national unity. Nationalist historians countered the colonial view by claiming that cultural, economic and political unity and a sense of Indian nationhood had prevailed in pre-colonial India.

Kautilya, for example, they said, had advocated in the Arthashastra the need for a national king. This need to assert the unity of India in the past explains, in part, why Indian historians tended to see Indian history as a history of Indian empires and their break up and why they treated the period of empires as period of national greatness.

In their view Chandragupta Maurya, Asoka, Chandragupta Vikramaditya and Akbar were great because they built great empires. Interestingly, this led to a contradiction in the nationalist approach during the Gandhian era. On the one hand India was praised as the land of non-violence and, on the other hand, the military power of the empire-builders was praised.

One curious result was that Asoka was praised for his commitment to nonviolence by some historians; others condemned him for the same as it weakened the empire against foreign invaders. The nationalists wrote approvingly of India’s culture and social structure. In the bargain they underplayed caste oppression, social and economic denigration of the lower castes, and male domination.

Moreover, while rightly emphasizing India’s contribution to the development of civilization in the world; they tended to underplay the impact of other cultures and civilizations on India’s development. Furthermore, as in the case of political institutions, often the worth of social values and institutions was accepted and then found to have existed in ancient India.

Apart from its historical veracity, which cannot be discussed here, the nationalist historians’ approach towards ancient India had a few highly negative consequences, (i) Nearly all achievements of the Indian people in different areas of human endeavour were associated with the ancient period; (ii) It was Hindu culture and social structure in its Sanskrit and Brahman cal form that was emphasized. Glorification of the past tended to merge with communalism and, later, with regionalism.

In any case the high water-mark of the Indian historical writing on the ancient period of Indian history was reached around early 1930s. Later, it became more and more a caricature of the writings of the earlier period.