The Indus Saga Read online

  III. The mouth of the lion

  The Indus is one of the mightiest rivers on this planet.7 It rises as a small spring, appropriately called the ‘Mouth of the Lion’, in the distant and inaccessible ‘Forbidden Land’ of Tibet. Near its source the young but ferocious Indus then cuts a narrow, deep gorge through two of the most imposing mountain ranges of the world: the Himalayas and the Karakorams. Upon entering the plains, it slows down and meanders to the sea through the plains of the North-West Frontier Province, the Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh. En route, it imbibes its five major Punjabi tributaries: the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej. This book is essentially about the peoples inhabiting the Indus and its tributaries. It is a land that is referred to here either as ‘Indus’ or the ‘Indus region’, depending upon the context. These terms are meant to identify the geographical extent of the land and to distinguish it, at the same time, from ‘India’, the remainder of the subcontinent. Indus is presently the area that substantially comprises the state of Pakistan. When referring, however, to the river Indus, the definite article ‘the’ precedes Indus.8 And also, when ‘Indus’ is used as an adjective, as in the Indus person, the Indus region, the Indus culture. This is not the case when the reference is to the entire area comprising Pakistan. That will just be called ‘Indus.’

  Indus (Pakistan) has a rich and glorious cultural heritage of its own. This is a distinct heritage, of a distinct and separate nation. If the Pakistani was really reassured of this he would be confident that there is no fear of any other country devouring or destroying his state. And he would thus come out of the present-day ‘bunker-mentality.’

  During the last six thousand years Indus has, indeed, remained independent of and separate from India for almost 5,500 years. Only the three ‘Universal States’9 - those of the Mauryans, the Mughals, and the British - welded these two regions together in single empires. And the aggregate period of these ‘Universal States’ was not more than five hundred years.

  For the remainder, from prehistory to the nineteenth century, Indus has been Pakistan. 1947 was only a reassertion of that reality. It was the reuniting of the various units - the Frontier, the Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Kashmir - once again in a primordial federation. The mohajirs, who reverted to the Indus in 1947 and thereafter, were the sons and daughters returning to the mother. As such, ‘Pakistan’ preceded even the advent of Islam in the subcontinent. It has deeper, more ancient foundations. It was certainly not merely ‘a chasm that one people created for themselves in the ten short years from 1937 to 1947’, as some Indians would like to believe.10 It need not, therefore, be structured as a fundamentalist intolerant Islamic polity.

  The subcontinent has itself always been at least two distinct worlds: the truly ‘Indic region’, comprising the Gangetic plains and peninsular India, on the one hand, and the ‘Indus region’, consisting of the basin of the Indus and its tributaries (i.e., Pakistan) on the other. In fact, the twain have seldom, if ever, truly met. ‘Indus’ (that encompasses the entire Indus valley, including the areas served by the tributaries Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum) has been one large, independent, politico-economic zone for the past countless centuries. Some might even say that from the age of the Aryans, Indus has been relatively closer to the areas of the Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) than to any other plains, river system, peninsula or desert region, whether Indian or Arab.

  IV. Al-Sindh and Al-Hind

  The present-day belief in this oneness and unity of the entire subcontinent has been inculcated by the calculated interpretations of mythology and, in recent times, by the unifying grip of Pax Britannica.11 The concept of the subcontinent’s ‘oneness’, given currency by the secure and unified hold of the Raj, was adopted eagerly by the Indian historians and political scientists and unquestioningly by their Indus counterparts. To the Indian, it seemed a natural and inescapable conclusion.12 But even such Indus scholars as have striven to rationalize and support the impetus for Muslim separatism and the creation of Pakistan, only partially appreciate the truth and essence of its historical and politico-cultural roots.

  It is true that the world has shrunk in the last two centuries. The steamship, the railway engine, the telegraph, with their successors, the automobile, the aeroplane, the radio, the television, the telephone and, most recently, the satellite, have contributed to the fusion and integration of cultures. The period of most of the earlier of these advances coincided, in the subcontinent, with the unifying political hold of the Raj. In the one hundred years preceding the partition of the subcontinent, Indus and India seemed to have merged, to have dissolved into one entity.

  Not quite. All the primordial impulses that shape a culture, a polity and a society remained different. Indus never really became a part of India. Many common features had no doubt been acquired by the two. Some of these had substance while others only had a veneer of commonality. But at the core, each was given to relentless and natural antipodal pulls.

  Captivated by the ‘oneness’ concept, Indian and Pakistani historians have, however, always tied the history of Pakistan solely to the history of the Indian subcontinent. They have preferred to correlate it to the politics of central India, the Deccan, and the South, rather than to the more influential developments in Parthia, Bactria, around the Aral Sea, or in Persia.13 To this day, historians continue to style the variegated and many-faceted history of Indus as an integral part of what is called ‘Indian’ history. Accordingly, even when focusing only upon Indus history they pay more attention to the influence upon it of the Indian dynasties than to the politics of Indus itself; even less thought is given to relevant events and changes in Persia or Central Asia.14

  Nor has the 1947 partition of the subcontinent along the natural and historical divide between Indus and India been properly comprehended by Pakistani historians. Many Pakistani scholars and writers, in their zeal to justify Partition do not seek the primordial roots of the process. Yet, with a passion for eschewing all that was Indian, they choose to trace their country’s cultural foundations solely to extra-territorial linkages. In denying the Indian, they deny the Indus. This exercise unwittingly but unambiguously prevents them from recognizing the many attributes of Indus culture which are common with the Indian. Without comprehending these, it may never be possible to understand the justifiable pride that a very important section of present-day Indus society, the mohajir, takes in his association with his birthplaces in Agra, Lucknow and Allahabad. But a ‘denationalized’ Indus elite feels that the very rationale of Pakistan must be a complete and total divergence of the attributes of the Pakistani from the Indian.15 Perhaps it was feared that an identification of any commonality between them would jeopardize the rationale for Pakistan. Therefore, a cultural commonality with a completely extra-territorial peoples had to be found.

  In looking outside the region for the genesis of Pakistan, the Pakistani historian and ideologue is captivated by the ‘Arab element’. The rationale for Muslim separatism is attributed solely to the Middle-eastern Arab influence upon the peoples of the Indus region. A ‘personality switch’ is thus suggested. The Pakistani’s breaking away from the one identity (the Indian) and his reassimilation in the other (the Arab) are both emphatically propounded and vigorously propagated as unassailable absolutes.16 These assumptions generate conflict between the ‘local’ (who has thus ‘switched’), and the mohajir (who continues to recall, and relive, life in his Indian birthplace).

  This concept of the ‘personality switch’ (of the Indus inhabitant assuming an extra-territorial Arab personality) runs contrary to the historical fact that Indus had almost no direct interaction with the Arabs. In the long period since the advent of the Aryans to the present age, Sindh alone, out of the entire Indus region, had direct political contact with the Arabs. That, too, was for the brief period of 144 years, from AD 711 to 854. Despite this very brief direct contact with the Indus region, Arab authors themselves were perceptive enough to provide one important insight into the distinctness of Indus from India. In their view, there was no doubt about it. They consistently treated the two lands as different. They always, and with a relentless consistency, referred to Indus as ‘al-Sindh’ and to India as ‘al-Hind.’17

  To suggest that contacts between Indus and the Arabs were historically brief is not to imply that there were no significant contacts between Indus and Islam. On the contrary, Indus was constantly exposed to Islamic doctrines over long centuries of continuous interaction with the Muslim conquerors and empire-builders, and the ascetics of the Sufi order. By the twelfth century Islam had become the dominant religion of the Indus region. Except for the young Muhammad bin Qasim, these invaders, soldier-kings and saintly ascetics were almost entirely of Central Asian or Persian origin, whether Mongols, Afghans, Turks or Iranians.

  Barring a few coincidental, fleeting contacts, the story of the Pakistani peoples shares little cultural commonality with the Arab. Despite their intense reverence for Islam, the fact remains that racially, ethnically, linguistically, and, above all, culturally, the peoples of Pakistan are more closely linked to the peoples of Central Asia and Iran than to the peoples of the Arab world. The Arabian Sea and the monsoons separated Indus and the Arabian peninsula and maintained a civilizational distance between them. The monsoons crossed the sea in a direction that took the Arabs to the coasts of the Indian peninsula, and not to the mouth of the Indus or up its waterway.18 Even Muhammad bin Qasim’s advent was the result of political exigencies.19

  This has seldom been comprehended objectively and dispassionately. Artificial arguments have endeavoured to pull Indus either inevitably into India or into an altogether extraterritorial linkage. The one distorts the past. The other confounds the present.

  V. The battered soul
of Pakistan

  Pakistan has always had an identity; and it has always had a soul. Its soul has often been lost to it by interpretations based on illogical myths and obscurantist double-speak. It is today battered by the intolerant and fratricidal schisms of sectarian, linguistic and regional groups; brutalized by ostentatious consumerism and corruption; held hostage by the manifest opportunism and inconstancy of its ruling classes.

  Yet this soul is a colourful and vibrant fabric in which many distinct and differing threads have been interwoven and have peacefully coexisted, each adding to the strength and value of the weave. It is time to shake off the acrid dust that sectarian, linguistic and regional conflicts have showered upon this fabric, that consumerism and opportunism have laid upon it, and to expose its original brightness to all the sons and daughters of this nation, to reassure them of its inherent strength. It is time to rediscover and restore the soul, and the dream that is embodied in it. It is time to rediscover and restore Pakistan as a liberal, progressive, modern Muslim state with its rightful place in the comity of nations. Hence, this quest for the lost soul of Pakistan.

  Since I have endeavoured to support all my arguments with what I believe to be substantive evidence, my position is neither confrontationist nor submissive. It is, I hope, only rational. It is an attempt at combating the ‘fragility syndrome’ that afflicts many of my Pakistani compatriots, who labour under the phobia that some state or power will overtake and absorb us. It is intended to build confidence in a nation that shows an inherent lack of it despite a half century of present, and six thousand years of historical, existence. It is intended to reassure the Pakistani that the foundations of his country are primordial, indelible and firm.

  It may also, perhaps, induce the militant, chauvinistic and irrational elements on the Indian side to reconsider their view of Pakistan as a historical aberration. The Indo-Pak divide is rooted deep in history and should not be a bone of contention or a cause for conflict. It ought to be accepted as a historical fact. The confidence of the one side and the realization on the part of the other will, it is hoped, lead to a new and more substantive understanding and to the end of an adversarial relationship between the two great civilizations of the subcontinent. Let a Pakistani, truly confident of the strength of his roots, and an Indian, adhering to a rational approach to the history of the subcontinent, come forth with a greater understanding of their origins, and there will be lasting peace. And peace is the prerequisite for the development of two of the poorest and most populous nations of the modern world.

  VI. A generational bridge

  What follows could, perhaps, be categorized as a cultural history or, more appropriately, a history of the ‘political culture’. But the categorization of this account is not essential to the main argument itself. My aim is somewhat limited.

  I have endeavoured to examine several cultural trends, but not all. This selective exercise is justified by the purpose of this study. First, its focus is mainly upon the traits of the politico-economic culture. While, therefore, I draw upon poetry to illustrate a point, I have not examined in this book other fine arts like dance forms, painting and music in their historical perspective. Second, I have not concerned myself with the analysis of every significant historical event or fact. Those that I have selected are the several elements that, to my mind, make up the present-day ‘Indus person’: the Pakistani citizen. The purpose is for him to discover his own distinct identity, if he has one, and to establish it, if possible, on the firmer foundations of historical facts. Thirdly, while most of these facts may indeed be drawn from the domain of culture of the Indus region alone, yet many political and economic realities of areas beyond Indus are also pertinent to the inquiry. An examination of these, insofar as they throw light upon the Indus person, is thus not outside the pale of this modest work.

  I cannot claim to be a historian, less so a historiographer. But I see myself and my generation as a bridge between the past and the future, and between Indus and India. The past, particularly in the accounts of the days of the struggle for independence that I inherited from my parents, has to be passed on to another generation that is now in the process of learning about it. That generation will carry it to the future, hopefully without the burden of the prejudices of the past and with the confidence of being citizens of a stable state whose origins go back far in history. In doing that they must also embrace, and rejoice in, the heroism of the Indian struggle. Both struggles were essentially the same, yet different. They had many common heroes, many common moments of courage, sacrifice and glory. And the recalling of both must lead to harmony, not conflict.

  Other historians may come down heavily upon me for treading in the territory of their discipline. But that, besides being their prerogative, is a jeopardy that I cannot avoid in my quest for the roots of the ancient civilizations that are reflected today in the material and tangible shape of Pakistan.

  Through tales, legends, ballads and rituals, I have embarked upon the journey to rediscover Pakistan. And every tale, legend, ballad and ritual, from the most ancient to the relatively recent, from the pre-Islamic to the post-Islamic, has assured me that there has always existed a ‘state’ or region, encompassing the Indus and its tributaries, which was independent and distinct from India. My journey has carried me through several captivating phases and countless gripping episodes of its history. Without any promise of erudition or competence in expounding history, I seek to take the reader along with me on my journey.

  Some of the ideas spelt out in this book were contained in a limited series of articles that I published in 1993.20 Those articles brought me some instant encouragement, along with some unavoidable criticism. I had the occasion, while concluding the series, to thank those who had encouraged me, and to reassure them that, along with my other preoccupations, I would continue in my efforts to discover the mysteries of the land that I was born in, the land that I love, the land of the majestic Indus and its many giant tributaries: Pakistan.

  I only wish to remind those who have taken umbrage at some of my conclusions (like the one that asserts that fundamentalism of whatever variety or persuasion is a culture largely alien to the Indus region) that I do not claim to have subscribed the last word on the cultural history of the Indus region. My conclusions may, perhaps, provoke them to analyse and write, even if only to flout my impressions. I look forward to their contribution to this area of study, so rarely entered upon. Not only that, if I trigger off some research into our past by scholars and students more competent than me, I will be satisfied.

  Quite often, we look at our past through the spectacles of our present. Our past is, in reality, now our present. There can, indeed, be no present without its past. This book is about our past. Too much of fundamentalist obscurantism and too many of our inflexible contemporary prejudices colour our analysis of our past. I have made an attempt to break with that tradition. If others take up the challenge from the point beyond which it was not within my capacity to continue, I think I will have achieved my purpose.

  VII. A thematic approach

  Accounts of political history are often linear. Each normally starts from one point of time and moves, along a more or less straight line, towards the end of that given period. The story of the Great Mughals must, therefore, start with Babar and end, in 1707, with the death of Aurangzeb.

  That cannot be the case with an account of the ‘cultural’ history of a people. To address ourselves to the substance of cultural history we may ask and answer the question with the historian Kosambi: ‘But what is history? If history means only the succession of outstanding megalomaniac names and imposing battles, Indian history would be difficult to write. If, however, it is more important to know whether a given people had the plough or not than to know the name of their king, then India has a history.’21 Kosambi then proceeds to adopt the following definition for his historical outline of the culture and civilization of ancient India: ‘History is the presentation in chronological order of the successive changes in the means and relations of production. This definition has the advantage that history can be written as distinct from a series of historical episodes. Culture must then be understood also in the sense of the ethnographer, to describe the essential ways of life of the whole people.’