A Morden Period Of India

The modern period of Indian history begins with the Mughal empire which was comparable in size with some of the ancient Indian empires but was totally different from them in its internal structure. It was a highly centralised state based on the extensive control of land revenue and of a military machine which could rival that of contemporary European states.
In fact, the size of the machine was the reason for the final collapse of this empire which could not meet its financial needs. This was then achieved by the British who conquered the remnants of this empire and continued its administrative tradition and made it much more effective.
CHARIOTS, ELEPHANTS AND THE
METHODS OF WARFARE
The course of Indian history which has been briefly sketched here was deeply affected by changes in the methods of warfare. The Aryan warriors relied on their swift chariots which made them militarily superior to the indigenous people but could, of course, also be used for incessant warfare among themselves. Chariots did not lend themselves to monopolisation by a centralised power. But the war elephants on which imperial Magadha based its military strength were ideal supporters of a
INTRODUCTION
8 power monopoly. The eastern environment of Magadha provided an ample supply of wild elephants, but maintenance was of greater importance than supply. Only a mighty ruler could afford to maintain adequate contingents of war elephants. The entrance of the elephant into
Indian military history around 500 BC thus made a profound difference to the political structure and the strategy of warfare. Chandragupta
Maurya’s gift of 500 elephants to Seleukos Nikator was one of the most important military aid transactions of the ancient world.
Indian military strategy is faithfully reflected in the game of chess which is supposed to have been invented by an Indian Brahmin for the entertainment of his king. In this game as well as on the battlefield, the king himself conducts the operations from the back of an elephant. He has to take care not to expose himself too much, because if he is killed his army is vanquished even if it is still in good condition. Therefore the movements of the king are restricted. The dynamics of the battle are determined by the general, the cavalry and the runners. The flanks of the army are protected by elephants which may also be moved into front-line positions as the battle draws to a decisive close. The infantrymen, mostly untrained, slow and armed with very elementary weapons are only important because of their numbers and because of their nuisance value in some critical phases of the battle. This strategic pattern remained more or less the same for more than 2,000 years.
The upkeep of such an army required a regional stronghold of sufficient dimensions. The structure of the Indian environment and the distribution of such nuclear regions predetermined a standard extension of direct rule over an area about 100–200 miles in diameter and a potential of intervention in regions at a distance of 400–500 miles. Direct rule refers to the ability to collect revenue and the potential of intervention is defined as the ability to send a substantial army with war elephants to a distant region with a good chance of defeating the enemy but not with the intention of adding his region permanently to one’s own area of direct rule.
If we keep these rules of the game in mind we can delineate three major regions in India which in turn can be subdivided into four smaller subregions, each of which theoretically would be able to support a regional ruler. But generally only one ruler in each major region would be strong enough to establish a hegemony over the respective sub-regions, but his resources would not permit him to annex all of them permanently.
A ruler who had achieved such a hegemony in his major region might then also have tried to intervene in one or two other major regions. This interaction was conditioned by the location of powerful rulers in the other major regions. It is of great importance in this respect that there was also a fourth region, a vast intermediate area in the centre of India which provided a great challenge to the potential of intervention of aggressive rulers.
INTRODUCTION
9
THE REGIONAL PATTERN OF INDIAN HISTORY
The first major region of the Indian subcontinent is the alluvial land of the northern rivers which extends for about 2,000 miles from the mouth of the
Indus to the mouth of the river Ganga. This belt of land is only about 200 miles wide. The two other major regions are the southern highlands and the east coast. They are separated from the northern region by the large intermediate zone which extends right across India for about 1,000 miles from Gujarat to Orissa and is 300–400 miles wide.
The northern region is subdivided into four smaller regions, the first one being the region of the first great Indian empire in the east, Bengal and
Bihar, the second the middle Gangetic basin including the lower Ganga-
Yamuna Doab, the third the Agra-Delhi region and the Western Doab, and the fourth the Indus region. The intermediate zone is both a mediator and a buffer between the northern region and the two other ones. Its two terminal regions, Gujarat and Orissa, are both separated from the other major regions in specific ways, Gujarat by the desert in the north and
Orissa by mountains and rivers which are always in flood in the monsoon season. The interior of the intermediate zone contains four enclaves which are isolated from each other: the fertile plains of Chattisgarh, a region which was called Dakshina Koshala in ancient times; Vidarbha, the area around present Nagpur; the Malwa Plateau around Ujjain which was called Avanti in antiquity; and finally the Rajput country between Jaipur and Udaipur. Of course, there have been some contacts among these regions of the intermediate zone and with the other major regions.
Furthermore Gujarat and Orissa, predestined by their location on the coast, have been in touch with regions overseas. But for military intervention, this intermediate zone has always been a major obstacle.
The four sub-regional centres of the highland region are the Deccan
Lava Trap around Aurangabad and Paithan, the central region around
Haiderabad, including the old capitals of Bidar, Manyakheta and Kalyani, the region between Bijapur and Vijayanagara which includes old capitals such as the Badami of the Chalukyas, and finally the region around
Mysore, the stronghold of the Hoysalas and later on of Tipu Sultan. The four subregions within the east coast region are the Krishna-Godaveri delta, Tondaimandalam around present Madras, the centre of the old
Pallava empire, Cholamandalam in the Kaveri delta region, the home ground of the Chola dynasty, and finally Pandyamandala around Madurai, the centre of the Pandyas.
The three last mentioned sub-regions are close to each other, but they are divided from the first east coast sub-region, the Krishna-Godaveri delta, by a stretch of land called Rayalaseema. Here the highland comes close to the coast and cuts into the fertile coastal plains. Thus, though
Rayalaseema and the region adjacent to it, the Raichur Doab located
INTRODUCTION
10 between Krishna and Tungabhadra, never became an important centre of power, it was fought over frequently. It has a rich cultural heritage and is full of ancient temples, but no powerful ruler ever put up his headquarters there. This may also be due to the fact that Hindu kings did not like to build capitals near the confluence of rivers which are considered to be sacred and must therefore be accessible to pilgrims from everywhere and that means accessible also to enemies.
Another interesting region is Kongunad, the area to the south of present
Coimbatore, being the hinterland of the three southern coastal regions.
This region was of some importance in antiquity. The many Roman coins found there suggest it may have been an area of transit for important trade routes. However, it never provided a stronghold for an important dynasty, except perhaps for the Kalabhras who dominated the southeast coast from the fourth to the sixth century AD and of whom not much is known so far.
The west coast has been omitted from our survey of major regions for good reasons, the small strip of land between the Ghats and the Arabian
Sea never provided a foothold for any major power; it only supported some local rulers.
The capitals of the kingdoms which were established in these various regions have, with few exceptions, not survived the decline of those kingdoms. Today we may only find some ruins and occasionally a village which still bears the ancient great name. There are several reasons for this disappearance of the old capitals. First of all they depended on the agricultural surplus of the surrounding countryside and, therefore, on the ruler who managed to appropriate this surplus. Once the ruler was gone, the capital also disappeared and if a new dynasty rose in the same region it usually built a new capital. In the central area of each of these regions there were many places suitable for the location of a capital. In fact, these central areas are demarcated by the frequency of capitals constructed there
(see Map 1).
Only in a very few instances did a unique strategic location compel many dynasties throughout the ages to build their capitals more or less on the same spot. The prime example of this is Delhi, which controls the entrance to the fertile Ganga-Yamuna Doab. The Aravalli mountain range closely approaches the Yamuna here where this river flows in a wide, flat bed. Whoever was in control of this gateway held sway in this part of northern India, or, to put it differently, he who wanted to rule this region had to capture this gateway. Therefore the area around Delhi is, so to speak, littered with the remnants of about a dozen ancient capitals which have been built here for more than two millennia.
Patna, the old Pataliputra, is a strategic place of similar importance. It is located on a high bank of the river Ganga and when the river is in spate in the monsoon season, the city looks like an island in the midst of the flooded plains. Pataliputra emerged as a bastion of Magadha in its fight
INTRODUCTION
11 against the tribal republics to the north of the Ganga. It also controlled the access to the eastern route to the south via the Sone valley and along the slopes of the Vindhya mountains. When the rulers of Magadha moved their capital from southern Bihar into the centre of the valley of the Ganga they naturally selected Pataliputra as their new capital and many of their successors did the same. The highlands and the east coast have no perennial capital sites like that, the regional pattern remained fixed, but the location of the capital was a matter of discretion.
The great distances which separated the regional centres of the southern highlands and the east coast from those of the northern region meant that in many periods of Indian history great rulers of the South and of the
North co-existed without ever clashing. Intervention across the wide intermediate zone was always very hazardous, and even more problematic was the attempt at governing a huge empire from two capitals, one at
Delhi and the other in the northernmost regional centre of the highlands
(Daulatabad/Aurangabad). But even the regional centres of the highlands and of the east coast were so distant from each other that the potential of intervention was fairly restricted. For instance, Badami (Vatapi), the capital of the third sub-region of the highlands is about 400 miles from the centres of the first and the second regions of the east coast. The Krishna-Godaveri delta was subjected to frequent intervention from the highlands whenever the foremost ruler of that region had his headquarters around present
Haiderabad which is only about 150 miles west of this fertile delta. The only exception to this rule seems to be the establishment of Vengi by the
Chalukyas whose home base was at Vatapi at that time.
Within the three major regions the struggle for hegemony continued.
The likelihood of conflict between rulers of two major regions was dependent on these ‘domestic’ struggles. For instance, if the ruler of a southern centre of the highlands was in power and a ruler of the Delhi-
Agra region had attained hegemony in the North, there was hardly a chance of their clashing. But if the foremost ruler of the southern highlands was located in the north of this region and the North was in the hands of a ruler of the middle Gangetic basin, a clash was much more likely (for example, the Rashtrakuta encounter with the Gurjara Pratiharas).
The potential for long-distance intervention and conquest grew only when the Islamic invaders of the North introduced the new method of swift cavalry warfare. However, it did not, at first, change the pattern of regional dominance. All rulers quickly adopted the new strategy and thus there was once more a uniform standard of warfare throughout the subcontinent. However, the new strategy had important internal consequences for the political structure of the regional realms. Horse breeding was always a problem in India and good warhorses had to be imported from Arabia and Persia at a high price. This made the maintenance of the military machine more expensive. At the same time the
INTRODUCTION
12 man on horseback was an awe-inspiring collector of land revenue and thus the appropriation of surplus could be intensified. A new military feudalism, hand-in-hand with a military urbanism, arose in this way. Cavalry garrisons were established in the countryside and their commanding officers became local administrators making their headquarters focal points for their respective neighbourhoods. The extraction of surplus from the countryside was delegated to a large extent. These cavalry officers were rarely local notables. They were usually strangers who owed their appointment to the regional ruler, and if they thought of rebellion at all they thought in terms of replacing the ruler himself rather than gaining autonomy over the area which they happened to control.
THE MARITIME PERIPHERY AND THE
INTRUSION OF EUROPEAN POWERS
The preoccupation with the cavalry warfare blinded the Indian rulers to the maritime challenge of European powers. They would only take an enemy seriously if he confronted them with large contingents of cavalry.
They did not pay any attention to the Indian Ocean as the most important element of the total Indian environment. Nobody had ever invaded India from the sea and, therefore, the rulers were sure that they could neglect the
Europeans who, at the most, hired some Indian foot soldiers to protect their trading outposts. They knew the monsoon would not permit a sustained maritime invasion of India, as it only carried ships to India during a few months of the year. Thus a maritime invader would find his supply lines cut within a very short time. Actually the European powers never attempted such an invasion but built up their military contingents in
India, drilling infantry troops which were less expensive to maintain but proved to be fatal to the Indian cavalry. At the same time control of the sea and of the maritime periphery provided the European powers with a much greater potential for intervention.
Indian rulers had not always neglected the Indian Ocean. The Chola kings had equipped great naval expeditions and Indian seafarers had a remarkable tradition of long-distance voyages. The Hindu prejudice against crossing the black water (kala pani) of the ocean had grown only in the late medieval period and the Mughal emphasis on the internal control of a vast empire had added to India’s isolationist tendency. On the other hand India did not conceive of the peripheral foreigners as a serious threat as did Japan, which adopted a policy of deliberate isolation. In this way the British were able to extend their control over India from their peripheral bridgeheads on the coast until they captured the vast land revenue base of the fertile eastern region which had provided the foundation for the first Indian empire more than 2,000 years previously.
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In fact, the British conquest of India closely paralleled the pattern of expansion of the Maurya empire. They subjected the Gangetic basin up to the
Ganga-Yamuna Doab as well as the east coast and penetrated into the interior of the south where they defeated Tipu Sultan of Mysore. Just like the
Mauryas, the British left large parts of the interior untouched. Indirect rule was less expensive in areas which did not promise a high yield of land revenue.
But, unlike the ancient Indian empires, the British Indian empire emphasised efficient administrative penetration. The Mughal heritage was already strong in this respect, but the British were able to improve greatly upon it. The
Mughal administration was, after all, a military one: the officers who made the decisions were warriors and not bookkeepers. The British replaced the warriors with bookkeepers who were under the strict discipline of a modern bureaucracy. In fact, British bureaucracy in India was far ahead of British administration at home which was both supported and encumbered by British tradition. This new system of bureaucratic administration was both much cheaper and more efficient than the Mughal system. The Mughal warrior administrator spent a large part of the surplus which he appropriated in the region from which it had come, but the British collected more and spent less and could transfer the surplus abroad. This implied a decline of the internal administrative centres which shrank to a size in keeping with their functions in the new system. Only the major bridgeheads on the maritime periphery,
Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, grew out of all proportion. They also became the terminal points of the railway network which linked the interior of India to the world market. Thus the old regional pattern of Indian history which has been outlined above was subverted by the British rulers. The pattern was turned inside out. The periphery provided the new regional centres of the three great Presidencies which encompassed the three major regions outlined above.
Only some of the capitals of Indian princes who lived on under British paramountcy remained as rather modest centres in the interior of the country until the British rulers decided to revive Delhi as the capital of British India.
But this transfer of the capital was more of a symbolic gesture than an effective change in the structure of British rule. Even independent India could not easily change the new regional order of India which was dominated by the great peripheral centres. The rise of new industrial centres in the Indian coal and iron ore belt around Chota Nagpur has not made much difference in this respect. These are industrial enclaves in a very backward region which has never been a nuclear region but rather a retreat for the tribal population.
THE REGIONAL PATTERN OF POPULATION DENSITY
One indicator of the relative changes of the importance of different regions in India is the density of population. Unfortunately we know very little about the distribution of population in earlier periods of Indian history. We can only guess that the great rice areas of the eastern Gangetic
INTRODUCTION
14 basin and of the east coast have always been regions with a much higher population density than the rest of India. These conditions remained more or less the same under British rule, because canal irrigation was introduced only in very few areas which could then be expected to support greater numbers of people than earlier. Fairly reliable census data are available only from 1881 onwards and since then the Census of India has continued in its decennial rhythm. The late nineteenth century was characterised by a slow but steady population growth which was then checked by the great famines at the end of the century. The 1901 census reflected this stage of development. It thus provides a fairly accurate picture of the regional pattern of population density which must have prevailed for quite some time. The regions of highest population density
(more than 150 people per square kilometre) were the following: the first three sub-regions of the northern plains, the first three sub-regions of the east coast, the southern tip of the west coast and a few districts in the fertile plains of Gujarat. This pattern has probably existed also in earlier centuries. Of course, population density must have been less in earlier times, but the relative position of the regions listed here must have been the same. This relative position is still more or less the same at present.
But since population increased much more rapidly after 1921, population density is a liability rather than an asset to the respective regions nowadays. The rate of increase has declined in some of these regions and risen in others. The southern rim of the Gangetic basin, the western and southern parts of the highlands, parts of Gujarat and the northern part of the east coast have been areas of above average population increase in recent decades. Particularly the changing structure of population density in the highlands, which had always been below average in earlier years, seems to be of great significance. This may also imply a shift in the political importance of various regions. Hitherto Uttar Pradesh, which encompasses the second and most of the third sub-region of the northern plains, has played a dominant role in India’s political history, earlier because of its strategic location and nowadays because of its enormous population which means a corresponding weight in political representation. But this position may not remain unchallenged. On the other hand those regions of India which still continue to be well below the national average in population density are also regions which never played a prominent role in Indian history. These are mainly four zones which cut across the subcontinent (see Map 1). The first reaches from the great desert in the west to the Chota Nagpur Plateau in the east. The second one consists of the Vindhya mountain range. The third extends from the centre of the highlands to the mountain ranges along the northern east coast, and the fourth one is the Rayalaseema region and the adjacent area to the west of it. Thus census data help us to support the main conclusions of the regional analysis presented above.
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The four areas which we have delineated are also important barriers of communication which limited the spread of regional languages. The border between the Tamil and the Telugu region follows the southern rim of the
Rayalaseema region, the northern border of the Telugu language region and thus the border of the Dravidian languages in general more or less follows the third zone. In the western highlands the region of the southernmost Indo-Aryan language, Marathi, is situated between the second and the fourth areas. The area between the first and the second zones is a region of a variety of old tribal languages, but this region has been penetrated by the lingua franca of the North, Hindi. But Hindi did not manage to penetrate the area beyond the second zone. Not all borders of language regions in India are marked by such thresholds, but the pattern illustrated here shows a remarkable coincidence of environmental conditions with the spread of languages. History and the environment are interdependent and Indian history owes much to an environment which has a highly differentiated structure and which is in some ways extremely generous but can also prove to be very hostile and challenging to those who have to cope with it.