This is the first of many posts that react to/discuss the History of the Indian People and Culture series. I plan to write roughly one every hundred pages or so, mainly to make sure I understand the claims in the series.

The first few chapters of Volume One were rather dull, insofar as we mainly focussed on the scope of the series, dicussed which sources were most valuable and worth considering, and described the geography, flora, and fauna of India. We have a ways to go before we get to my main research questions. I will write a bit later about some of the ideas brought up here, such as the dearth of recorded/rigorous political history prior to, say, 800, that contrasts with what may be the most complete intellectual/philosophical/spiritual records of any place in the world. I might write later about the spicy claim that Sanskrit was a form of linguistic unity despite the fact that maybe only 5% of people in India have ever spoken Sanskrit and many were literally prevented from learning it.

I want this post to focus on the following extract, taken from the end of two chapters on the geography of India. Majumdar claims that the relative isolation afforded by the Himalayas the oceans, was a double edged sword, whereby the geography prevented many invasions from ever happening, but made Indians complacent within the fertile region within those natural boundaries and ignorant of the outside world. He claims (I think rightly so) that Indians were perfectly content with India. The author argues that this contentment proved to be a mistake. He almost laments the fact that India didn’t have a collection of small nearby islands essentially to colonize that could have been a stepping stone for a larger navy than the Cholas could have justified.

It is, however, a singular fact worth noting, that in the numerous recorded instances of the foreign invasions from the West, the Indians have almost always been defeated by the new-comers. This can hardly be regarded as a pure accident. Nor can it be explained away by a lack of unity among the defenders, for the invaders did not always possess a numerical superiority over their opponents.

The true explanation seems to lie in India’s ignorance of the outside world. The rise of political powers or new political combinations, the evolution of military tactics, and the invention of new military weapons or fresh equipment, even in Central or Western Asia, not to speak of remoter countries, hardly ever interested India, though, as events proved, she fell a constant victim to one or other of them. The details of the defensive campaigns waged by Indian rulers leave no doubt that they were either unaware of the impending danger, and consequently not sufficiently prepared, or were outmatched by the new military formations or weapons to which they were complete strangers. The charge of a compact and well-disciplined cavalry force, held in reserve, has often proved decisive against the mass of elephants and infantry of the Indians, and yet they have never learnt the value of cavalry or the strategic importance of a reserve force. It may be noted as a typical instance that the Indian opponents of Babur were ignorant of the fire-arms which the latter used with such dreadful effect.

The reason for such ignorance is not merely to be sought in a spirit of isolation fostered by almost insurmountable barriers. It is also partly due to the fact that, for reasons stated above, Indian rulers had no occasion or temptation to carry on campaigns outside India. They lived and fought in their little world, vast enough for their personal ambitions and enterprises, and cared little for what was happening in the outside world.

Unfortunately, the physical barriers which shut off the vision of Indian rulers from the outside world were not strong or powerful enough to keep out all foreign invaders from Indian soil. When some of them did cross the barriers into India, they brought with them new ideas and forces of a progressive world with which India could not cope. But so strongly did the geographical factor operate, that as soon as these foreign invaders settled in India, they imbibed the insular spirit so congenial to her soil, and themselves fell victim to it. So it has been in the past, and so it is destined to be in the future, so long as the political vision of India confines itself within her natural boundaries of hills and seas, and does not look beyond to the outside world. (HCOIP, 106)

I think when Majumdar refers to “invaders” who “settled” in India and fell victim to focusing on the allures of the land of India at the expense of keeping track of everything else going on in the world, Majumdar is mainly referring to the Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate.

His take is a bit premature, as we require topics covered in later volumes to critically evaluate his claims. It is a bit out of place in a book that discusses the Vedic age, as his claims are about a time period atleast 2000 years after the period that is the focus of volume one.

Compare Majumdar’s take with an selection from Lala Lajpat Rai ’s writings on his travels in the United States in the 1910s.

The desire for power and pleasure absorbs the best thought and the best life of the west and no one can deny that the western people have had wonderful success in tapping all the resources of humanity, physical and intellectual, to gain these ends and that they are at the present moment the masters of the world. The world rolls at their feet. Even the elements obey their commands and do their behest. Land, water and air are all at their service. They make and unmake heat and cold. They yoke and unyoke all material forces to meet their wants and contribute to their pleasure and power. Yes, I have seen all that, but at the same time I have not been able to free myself from the feeling that all is not well with the world. I have found myself going in and going out, thinking and trying to find a reply to the questions, “Are they really happy?” Has the modern civilization really added substantially to the sum total of the happiness of humanity"? “Has it brought humanity nearer to perfection”? “Has it drawn the hearts of mankind nearer to each other?” “Has it spread contentment?” “Has it reduced misery and wretchedness?” “Is the majority of mankind really happier and better today than it was before the discovery of the steampower and the printing press?” “Is the lot of the toiler, the unfortunate drawer of water and hewer of wood, the miner, the farm labourer, the factory man and the factory woman, the working boy - and the working girl, better and more endurable than it was before?” “Does the pleasure that men and women, boys and girls, derive from saloons, picture-shows, and pleasure-resorts, sufficiently compensate for the misery and the squalor that attend their labor in the factory or the mine?”

…………

The ancient Aryans were a virile people. They conquered the world and spread over and occupied the East and the West. Even to-day the descendants of those who settled in Europe are ruling the world. The Hindus went down, because at a certain stage of their developement they took to the analytic way of looking at things. They proclaimed “neti, neti” (neither this nor that) . The Far Eastern nations followed the Hindus and they also fell. Now there is a reaction and the materialistic civilization of the West is at their door. The choice lies between extinction and Europeanisation, unless they can find out a mean by which they may be able to retain the best parts of both and evolve a new and a more humane civilization of their own. That is the problem before the East, and on the solution of that problem depends the future happiness of the world. When and how it will be solved is in the womb of the future.

It may be perhaps that the speculations of the Vedic Hindus about the world, about spirit and matter, their solution of the social problems, their ideals of life and society were nearer the truth than those of the modern civilization; it may be that the moderners are on the right road to the evolution of a perfect ideal and civilization; or it may be that human affairs move in a circle. In any case I have not yet found a reply to the question “What is real civilization?” (Rai 336-337)

Maybe that insularity which allowed the civilization to grow up without succombing to “peer pressure” by catching the disease that causes one to dream of conquering the world and rape every other civilization in sight was a double edged sword. As another example, I think the military calculus in India today is probably less of the form “we must have 1-2x the amount of firepower as Europe or the US or China” and more of the form “can we sufficiently prevent invasion with 20%-70% of their firepower and focus on more important matters. Contrast that with the lead up to World War I, where Germany wanted atleast as much sea power as Britain, and Britain wanted atleast twice as much sea power as Germany.

At some point, I will probably write a post dedicated post about Rai’s book because it has some hot takes. But for our present purposes, we focus on the shared sentiment regarding India’s insularity with respect to material matters.

One of my eight or so research questions here involves finding out what changed between the Anglo-Mughal war of 1690 and the 1757 fall of Bengal . Do we really say that the Mughals went from thwonking the British and forcing them to pay a fine to reinstate trading privileges, to losing Bengal mainly because the Mughals became complacent, falling victim to the insularity bred by material/natural comforts that ailed previous Indians? Maybe? My instinct tells me that it isn’t so simple. that it’s so simple.