The Indus Saga Read online

  Yet, alas, many of them find no mention in the textbooks in Pakistani schools and colleges. Theirs’ is not the history that our official media is permitted to disseminate. We are told a different story altogether. Our textbooks are censored and tell not even the half-truth.

  Our earth, we are told, was not our own until people from distant lands came and conquered it (and us), for us. Our ancient heroes cannot be our heroes because they preceded our own conversion to Islam. Muslim conquerors fought only Hindu infidels, never a Muslim opponent. Victory was the fruit of the brave arm and the unflinching faith of Muslim armies. Their defeats were always the result of Hindu conspiracies or Muslim lasciviousness. Never was a God-fearing Muslim king defeated in a straight battle. Never did superior technology or better strategy win the day. Intrigue and betrayals caused the defeat of Muslim armies and states in all battles.

  Nor do our history books convey to us the crucial part played by advancements in science and technology in the successful conquest of the subcontinent by the West or in the result of any battle against its armies. Such advancements are not even noticed. There was always a conspiracy or a betrayal. The role of the printing press and the advantage provided by such Western inventions as the mariner’s compass, the steam engine, cast steel, the spinning jenny, the hydraulic press, the pocket watch, the sextant and the theodolite have never been analysed in our textbooks.

  The new power was equipped with the speed of the railway engine and the telegraph. The sloth of the old world was depicted by the bullock cart and the elephant. The new power was initiating its young to logrithms, practical geometry, plane trigonometry and calculus. The old order was smug, ensuring that its children were learning entire scriptures by rote. The new power had developed a stable and precise legal and parliamentary system separating the church from the state. The old system was worked by the arbitrary discretion of imperial or feudal lords in whom, exclusively, vested all authority — ecclesiastic and temporal.

  The result of the contest was predetermined. Neither intrigue nor betrayal could have reversed the outcome of the battles between ‘Muslim’ India and Christian Europe, at least not of the final result. Yet, through stories only of betrayal and deceit, our students are imbued with an unmitigated sense of betrayal. In vengeance alone do they thus seek to rid themselves of the sense of guilt and betrayal. They become easy prey to irrational dogma and the cycle of violence. Thus do our history books tend to distort the character of our youth.

  These, indeed, are aspects of how the more distant history is narrated. One marvels at how the very recent history is distorted. For several decades now the state-owned media in Pakistan has made blatant efforts to prove that Barrister Mohammad Ali Jinnah was an orthodox fundamentalist. We are also asked to believe that all the fundamentalist and religious parties supported him and his Muslim League in his pursuit of Pakistan. None has the courage to admit its past. And by denying their own past, the fundamentalists claim the exclusive right today to determine the agenda for Pakistan.

  But in opportunistically denying their own past they also cut us off from our past. Thus have these religious elements, who hated the guts of the modernist Barrister, become the custodians of the ideology of Pakistan. Thus have the obscurantist fundamentalists made ardent (but, mercifully, unsuccessful) attempts to displace liberal modernism in Pakistan.

  A large section of the Hindu elite and intellectuals in India is no less guilty of irrational extremism that culminates in communal violence. This segment has nursed the ‘injury’ of the division of the indivisible Akhand Bharat and targeted its ire towards the Indian Muslim, a minority in India, whenever an opportunity has been available: notably Ayodhya (1992), Gujarat (2002).

  Hence the dire and pressing need to go back to our roots, to go back to our origins, and to trace our own steps from pre-history to Partition. Thus, too, the need to revisit some more questions: What role did the Congress itself play in the Partition of the subcontinent? Who exploited religious symbolism more: Gandhi or Jinnah? Was Pakistan meant to be a fundamentalist theocratic state? Did Iqbal and Jinnah conceive it as an Islamic or as a Muslim State?

  The answers must depend entirely upon what we consider our identity and our destiny to be. That is the issue on which intense contemporary debate and contention remain focussed. Thus, the need to rediscover ourselves before we are completely swamped by the mumbo-jumbo of obscurantism and obfuscation. Thus, I thought, the need for The Indus Saga and the re-examination of the history of the two great nations of South Asia from the period preceding Patliputra to Partition.

  Part I of this book, titled ‘The Two Regions’, examines the divide between Indus and India, more or less along geographical lines. Part II, ‘The Two Worlds’, investigates the differences between the Indus person (along with the Indian in this case) and the most recent foreign rulers, the British. Part III, ‘The Two Nations’, explores the essential features and nature of the divide between the Muslims and the Hindus of the subcontinent. It also tries to discover the reasons why this divide finally became coterminous with the primordial dividing line between Indus and India in 1947. In endeavouring to determine the essential nature of each divide, an attempt is made to discover the character and the identity of the inhabitant of the Indus region.

  * * *

  I went to jail out of a love of democracy and for the creation of a more humane, liberal and enlightened society in my country. Like me, countless others protested the brutality and intolerance of those brutish rulers and of the elite that supported them. At that time the only honourable option seemed to us to be prison. And the gruesome images of Ayodhya and Gujarat also manifest the desperate need for harmony and tolerance on the other side of the border. No one who, in pursuit of tolerance and humanity, has not experienced life on the wrong side of prison walls can understand this commitment to, indeed a yearning for, more tolerant, more enlightened and more understanding societies in India and Pakistan.

  My only prayer is that never again in this land should prison seem to be the only honourable option for political activists, or for anyone else for that matter. And I have taken pains to trace the history of this region only to attempt to prove that the civilization that has been inherited by Indus citizens (Pakistanis) is not the gift of Aurangzeb or of any other emperor. Nor is it the legacy of any fundamentalist obscurantist, Hindu or Muslim. It is the land of the intense poetry of Khusrau, Hussain, Bahoo, Bullah, Waris, Latif, Khushhal, Iqbal and Faiz. It is the civilization that has been shaped by the deeds and tales of resistance, valour, commitment and wisdom of Rasalu, Jasrat, Sarang, Arjun, Dullah, Shah Inayat, Chakar, Khushhal, Kharal, Bhagat Singh and, above all, by that incomparable progressive and liberal Muslim: Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

  Whosoever has lived the life and died the death of our heroes, and whosoever has lost his heart to the poetry of our bards, has won the everlasting admiration of the people of Indus. He may have made many enemies in the process; bloodthirsty enemies, in fact. But he has lived after his death. This book therefore is as much about the battlefields where our heroes have fallen and the death-cells in which they have spent their last uncompromising days.

  1. Dr Humayun Khan and G. Parthasarathy: Cross Border Talks, Diplomatic Divide (2004) Roli Books p. 69.

  2. Maneesha Tikekar: Across the Wagah, An Indian’s Sojourn in Pakistan: (2004) Promilla & Co. p.135.

  3. Chaudhry Bahawal Bakhsh of Mongowal in District Gujrat who, at 82, courted arrest in 1946.

  4. The Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East (1996).

  PART ONE

  The Two Regions

  2000 BC to AD 1800

  The Historical Watershed.

  Introduction

  I. Search for the Pakistani identity

  Is the Pakistani an Arab? Or an Indian? Or something of both? Or neither? Are his origins entirely Central Asian? What influences has he imbibed from Persia? How is he different from the Europeans who ruled him for almost one hundred yea
rs? Does he have a distinct personality or culture of his own? If so, for how long has he had this distinctiveness? Was it first created by the partition of the Indian subcontinent in August 1947, or does it pre-date the Partition? Was the divide first created in 1940 when the Lahore Resolution was adopted, or did the roots of the division exist before that? Was the divide created by the First War of Independence, which the British call the ‘Great Mutiny’, or did it emerge with the coming of the first Muslim rulers and saints upon the areas now forming Pakistan?

  Or are the roots of the divide lodged even deeper, going back to prehistory? Has the Indus region, which comprises Pakistan, not had a natural and inherent urge towards separatism, and its own separate identity? Is the Indo-Pak divide not of primordial origin?

  The divide, of course, is there. It is real and tangible. It is manifested in the shape of Pakistan itself. But questions about the roots of Pakistan continue to abound. In this of course, it is far from unique. Such questions have also been raised about other nations. However, many of these other nations have attempted to provide answers for themselves with objectivity and reason. The Pakistani is still in search of an answer to the question: what, in essence, is the Pakistani’s identity?

  This question still confounds the minds of many who take an interest in the state of Pakistan as it exists today - as an important member in the comity of nations. This book endeavours to discover some answers to this question. It attempts, therefore, to address itself to the controversy concerning the Pakistani’s identity. It is about what many have called Pakistan’s ‘identity crisis.’

  It will not be such a great misfortune if the answers this book hopes to provide are not considered the last word on the subject. The real tragedy is that seldom has any Pakistani with unclouded and unbiased perceptions even dared to raise the question. And fewer still have even attempted to look for answers. Pakistanis have spent almost half a century without asking any questions. Indeed, questions are anathema - theirs is not to question why.

  By prohibiting questions, authority has been usurped in Pakistan by pretenders and impostors. Those who challenge the pretenders are punished with imprisonment, even death. This is a risk that all sensitive minds that choose to ask questions in such an imposed cultural environment must take. Yet the questions remain. Just as glacial ice melts only when it is exposed to the right amount of heat and sunlight, answers come when bold, courageous and informed questions are asked. I have thus undertaken to raise and address some fundamental questions.

  As I embarked on the perilous attempt to raise these questions and to seek answers, I came across other more inscrutable cultural traits for which our contemporary analyses provide no explanation. And if any explanation for such traits was indeed available, it seemed to be based on certain blindly but widely accepted myths. I have also therefore tried to identify these and other myths, and to determine their origins.

  The endeavour is to discover the true bedrock of Pakistan’s national identity and of its origins which are buried under layers of myth and obscurantism.

  II. An ancient concept

  In that mythical age when men rubbed shoulders with heroes, demons and gods, and when mountains moved, forests sprang, and the spirits of the rivers spoke, the plains of the present-day Delhi region supported the kingdom of Kurukshetra. It was the home of the Kurus.

  The Kurus lived in the Age of Iron. Unlike copper and bronze, iron was neither brittle nor in short supply. The heavier iron plough cut deeper furrows. It, therefore, made the Kuru farmer’s plough more efficient. Iron tools were used to clear the woods and jungles. Thus they aided the harvesting of a larger produce and wealth, which could support a richer ruling class than ever before.

  The Kuru rulers were rich. The seat of the Kuru throne was much sought after. There were frequent wars of succession. In one such war, the throne of the kingdom was contested between the progeny and successors of two rival claimants, Pandu and Dhritarashtra. The former had five sons, the latter one hundred. But the sons of Pandu were more vigorous. Initially exiled, they became soldiers of fortune and took to travelling from one royal court to another.1

  The sons of Pandu finally confronted the sons of Dhritarashtra in a fierce and sanguinary battle. Both sides had marshalled all their forces, and the plain of Kurukshetra became the scene of the bloodiest strife known to ancient history. All the kings of the subcontinent and even the distant Bactrians and the Chinese reportedly took part in support of one side or the other.2 After eighteen days of fierce fighting, the five Pandava brothers survived to win a kingdom encompassing Indus and India.

  It is perhaps a fact of no mean significance that in a vast and limitless subcontinent, the area of Kurukshetra lies close to the territories of Tarrain, Panipat and Sirhind. Altogether it is this small strip of prize land that has so often been the venue of historic battles which have decided the fate of the entire subcontinent.

  Another fact is, however, of even greater significance: The epic, Mahabharata,3 in describing that great prehistoric civil war not only unquestioningly assumes the ‘oneness’ of the vast subcontinent, but also looks upon the lands of Bactria and China, beyond its great mountain ranges, as outlying frontier regions, inseparable, inalienable and natural parts of the Indian subcontinent. The concept of the ‘unity and indivisibility’ of the vast and limitless subcontinent, itself the size of all of Europe, is thus ancient and rooted in history and myth.

  On the map, too, the Indian subcontinent appears to offer a rare compactness, albeit on a continental scale. It appears to be a single, unified and an exceptionally impregnable fortress. High and imposing mountain ranges protect its north and north-western frontiers. The deep expanse of the Indian Ocean becomes a vast intercontinental moat on all other sides.

  From the Pamirs in the north to Cape Comorin in the south, from Gwadar in the west to Assam in the east, and from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal - the Indian subcontinent has always been treated by the geographer and the historian alike as one single unit. ‘Indian History’ is held to imply the history of the entire geographical area lying between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. This contains two sprawling river basins - the Indus and the Ganges - with their alluvial plains and deltaic swamps. It embraces the central plateau with its forests and wild game. And it includes the southern peninsula, its hills, coastal plains, and a drainage network of turbulent and torrential streams.

  It was the oft-articulated argument of many leaders of the Congress Party before Partition, and is now of the present-day Hindu fundamentalists, that the subcontinent has been bequeathed by nature with an island-like unity and was indivisible. Nature appears to have provided imposing barriers in the shape of the two great mountain ranges radiating east and south-west from the central and northern apex of the Pamirs. To all appearances of physical and geographical circumstances, the subcontinent with its endless succession of plains, plateaus, and rain-soaked coastal strips, the vast expanse starting from the rugged Khyber to the Ghats of the Bombay-Goa coast, from the barren hills of Kalat to the humid green of the Sunderbans is one vast sanctuary, a single natural, indivisible whole. The exclusive, almost jealous protection afforded by the sky-scraping mountain ranges and the stormy tropical coastline appear to have quarantined the subcontinent in such a manner as ought to have been conducive to the intermixing of the indigenous racial stocks, designed by nature to evolve over the centuries into a common ‘Indian’ race. It was this apparent geographical compactness which persuaded an accomplished analyst like Jawaharlal Nehru to expound the concept of the subcontinent’s ‘oneness’ to the point of romance.

  Most arguments purporting to advance the unity of India drew upon the teachings of Shankaracharya4 of old and Vivekananda5 of the nineteenth century. Nehru himself drew inspiration from the travels of Shankar, that famed ascetic who established four major monastries in the four corners of the vast land. The northern monastry was located at Badrinath in the Himalayas, the southern at Sringeri in Mysore, the eastern
on the coast at Puri, and the western at Dwarka in Kathiawar - all attesting, in fact or fable, to the immense energy of the man. This great effort by the saintly ascetic also seemed to suggest to Nehru the ‘oneness’ of all the lands and peoples that came within these distant parameters.

  The much travelled Vivekananda spoke in a language that was simple. His message was quite clear. ‘I am a socialist,’ he wrote, ‘not because I think it is a perfect system, but because half a loaf is better than no bread.’6 He travelled to Egypt, China, Japan and America. When he went to America, he won for himself the title of the Cyclonic Hindu. Vivekananda died in 1902 at the age of only 39. Yet, in those few years, he spoke passionately of India, preaching in all corners of the subcontinent, taking its unity and oneness for granted. He left a lasting impression upon the minds of Indian intellectuals, many of whom were to lead the Indian National Congress in later and more crucial years.

  It must respectfully be submitted that all arguments, however, drawing from Shankaracharya and Vivekananda fail to perceive the fact that neither could create a synthesis of Indus and India. None of the four famed monastries of Shankar was placed in the Indus region. The argument that he had endeavoured to establish the unity of the entire subcontinent is, therefore, self-defeating unless its application is confined to the ‘Indian’ region, encompassing the Gangetic valley and peninsular India alone.

  As to Vivekananda, it is enough to say that he died only a few decades before the centrifugal pull of Indus was to compel, as if by the relentless magnetism of historical forces, the breakup of the subcontinent and lead to the creation of Pakistan.