Shenali D Waduge

India” was ruled by many kings as well as foreign rulers. Some had large empires while some ruled just one city. Even at the height of expansion no dynasty held the entire area that is today called India. ‘India’ was never one single country until the British put all the princely kingdoms and provinces together to create India in 1947. The name ‘India’ cannot be traced in any of the Vedas, Puranas, Itihaasa or even Amarakosa. Whatever the Indian envoy to Sri Lanka says there was never a country called India until the colonial British christened it. Undeniably there are ancient customs, traditions and a rich past that neo-colonial agendas are politically trying to destroy using the very representatives elected to office and this is what Dharmic religions and natives that value them need to take cognisance of.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/Indian-envoy-rebuts-Sri-Lankan-contention-that-India-is-a-creation-of-the-British/2016/08/15/article3581019.ece

At the time of independence, the names Bharat, Hindustan, Hind and Bharatbhumi, Bharatvarsha were suggested to be used for the soon to be independent nation – while individually these names connote different meanings, conclusively none stood for the area historically portraying the length, breadth, history, cultures, and unity because at no time were these areas under any one Indian or foreign ruler.

The Indian Constitution today, uses both India & Bharath. Neither name guarantees the size of the nation. However, In The Soul of India published in 1911, Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) proclaimed Bharat to be the only real indigenous name for India.

It was during Moghul rule India was called Hindustan. In 1904 Mohammad Iqbal penned his famous patriotic poem in Urdu Hamārā deśa, ‘Our country’ – Iqbal called the inhabitants of Hindustān by the old appellation Hindī, which signifies ‘Indian’. However, Savarkar by using Hindustan for Hindus omitted Sikhs and Muslims.

During the Constitutional debates to draft the Indian Constitution Seth Govind Das, a Congressman of Kamalapati Tripathi proposed Bharat as it was  ‘befitting our history and our culture’, because it was found in the old Hindu literature, whereas the ‘word India does not occur in our ancient books’.

Hargovind Pant pointed out this name (India) was given to our country by foreigners who having heard of the riches of this land were tempted towards it and had robbed us of our freedom in order to acquire the wealth of our country. If we, even then, cling to the word ‘India’, it would only show that we are not ashamed of having this insulting word which has been imposed on us by alien rulers. Really, I do not understand why we are accepting this word”

At the other spectrum Pandit Balkrishna Sharma (‘United Provinces, General’) went on to say I hate the word ‘Hindustan’.

What is amply clear is that we have a problem where a group of natives wish to adhere to western model of how Asians should live and function while at the other spectrum the Asians wish to keep their heritage and not have the Abrahamic religions dictate how we should live and think.

In 2004 the Samajwadi Party proposed the usage of the term Bharat only. It was in July 2005 that V. Sundaram, a retired member of the IAS and a freelance journalist declared that ‘Bharat’ be removed from being the name of the nation because it sounded too Hindu. In 2012 Congress MP Shantaram Naik introduced a Bill to the Rajya Sabha to amend Article 1 to replace Bharat with India in the Preamble to the Constitution and rephrase ‘India, that is Bharat’ to Bharat only and substitute Bharat to wherever India is mentioned in the Constitution. In 2015 a public interest litigation was filed in the Supreme Court demanding that India should be renamed as Bharat http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-india-or-bharat-supreme-court-seeks-response-from-centre-state-governments-2080494

Let us look at the history.

Remains found in the Narmada Valley in central India estimates that people had been living there between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. The Bronze Age began around 3300 BCE with the early Indus Valley Civilisation – this area covers modern-day India (Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan provinces) and Pakistan (Sindh, Punjab, and Balochistan provinces).

The Harappans were the inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley. Around 1700 BCE most cities were abandoned and civilization declined. The Vedic period started around 1750 BCE to 500BCE. The Aryan society were distinct from the Harappans. Many of the previous small tribal units and chiefdoms began to coalesce into monarchical, state-level polities.

The Kuru kingdom was the first state-level society of the Vedic period. Then came the Panchala & Videha kingdoms (covering Nepal and Bihar). From the sixth centuries BCE to fourth centuries BCE sixteen kingdoms or oligarchic republics (known also as mahajanapada) existed. These 16 kingdoms are mentioned in ancient Buddhist texts like the Anguttara Nikaya that existed prior to the rise of Buddhism. Magadha is one of the 16 kingdoms where Gautama Buddha founder of Buddhism lived, he attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon in Sarnatha and held his first Buddhist Council in Rajagaha.

The Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) was the first empire to unify India into one state however the Maurya Empire covered only Himalayas in the North, Assam in the East, modern Pakistan to the West upto Hindu Kush mountains in what is today Afghanistan. Modern Odisha (ancient Kalinga) was not covered by Maurya Empire. King Ashoka and Chanakya’s Arthashatra emerged from Mauryan times.

The Kushan kingdom (now Afghanistan) was established in 1stc AD. Kushan kingdom was ended by Persian invaders in 3rd c AD with the rule of the Guptas which came to an end in 5thc AD with arrival of the Huns seizing Kashmir and Punjab

The first of the major invasions came from Alexander of Macedonia (336 B.C.E.  – 323 B.C.E.) to spread Greek culture.

The Islamic invasions (636 C.E. – 850 C.E.) under Caliph Umar, within four years of Muhammad’s death were brutal. French writer François Gautier has said, “The massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.” – Islamic rule lasted 1000 years.

Famous Islamic dynasties – Tughlaqs (1320 C.E. – 1412 C. E), the Mughals (1526 C.E. – 1857 C.E) Akbar (1556 AD – 1605 AD) Shah Jahan (1628 AD – 1658 AD) Aurangzeb was the last of the Mughals (1658 AD – 1707 AD) The last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was imprisoned by the Britishers after the 1857 mutiny.

What is interesting to note is that the Mughals did not invade Nepal, Bhutan, Assam and thus Buddhism survived however under politicized Hindu rule Buddhism has statistically declined. This must be a concern for Sri Lanka’s Buddhists with India’s present overtures to build a mythical Ramayana trail and news of other Indian influenced politically motivated Hindu incursions in Sri Lanka which will all be future threats to the survival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka if not addressed now itself. While the Buddhists empathize with the manner Hindu India is being aggressively subject to evangelization by Western NGOs, we cannot condone the political aspect of Hindu rule that seeks to undermine Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and integrity and directly affecting the Buddhist ethos of the country.

Then came the Portuguese, Dutch and the British.

The Portuguese Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498.  In 1510 Affonso de Albuquerque captured the island of Goa. Rivalry between the Dutch and English resulted in the Dutch East India Company “winning” Southeast Asia and Indonesia and the British East India Company having to settle for “second-best”, that is India.

The British East India Company was established under a Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I on 31st December 1600 AD. The Company rule commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey. The company began annexing states or forming treaties with limited power to the Indian rulers. In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-thirds of India.

The Company took control of Mysore by defeating Tipu Sultan in 1792 and the Marathas were finally defeated in 1819 AD. By 1850s the company succeeded in establishing power in Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and the east coast. By 1816 it took over Nepal, Sind in 1843, Punjab in 1849 and Burma in 1886.

After the 1857 mutiny the British Crown took direct control over administration from the company. British divided India into 2 parts – British India, directly governed by the British government through provinces (earlier Presidencies of British India) and the Princely states in British India with local ruler or king with honorary titles like Maharaja, Raja, Maharana, Rana, Nizam – but Britain at any time could interfere into the internal affairs of these states.

The Four Grand Divisions of India

• Bengal Presidencywith its capital at Calcutta established 1690.

• Bombay Presidencywith its capital at Bombay  in 1687.

• Madras Presidencywith its capital at Madras established 1640 (the presidency included most of southern India, including the whole of the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and parts of Odisha, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, and the union territory of Lakshadweep.) In 1950, when the Madras Presidency became Madras State

• North-Western Provinceswith the seat of the Lieutenant-Governor at Agra 1834.

The queen’s proclamations of 1858, promised not to extend British territories in India by annexing Princely states. Queen Victoria became Empress of India in 1876. India was officially known after 1876 as the British Indian Empire.

British India in 1910, covered approximately 54% of the area and included over 77% of the population. The term British India also applied to Burma for a shorter time period: starting in 1824, a small part of Burma, and by 1886, almost two thirds of Burma had come under British India. From 1937, Burma was administered as a separate British colony. British India did not apply to Ceylon which was a British Crown Colony. Maldives was a Protectorate.

When the British gave ‘India’ independence in 1947 there were 565 Princely States & 17 Provinces. Upon the Partition of British India into the Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan, 11 provinces (Ajmer-Merwara-Kekri, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Bombay, Central Provinces and Berar, Coorg, Delhi, Madras, Panth-Piploda, Orissa, and the United Provinces) joined India, 3 (Baluchistan, North-West Frontier and Sindh) joined Pakistan, and 3 (Punjab, Bengal and Assam) were partitioned between India and Pakistan.

Yellow = directly ruled by a colonial administration

Pink = ruled by independent kings with limited sovereignty which was controlled by Britain. These local kings were happy to send their forces to quell rebellions.

Contrary to opinion that Tamil Nadu was never invaded, General Malik Kafur entered Tamil Nadu in 1311. Malik Kafur looted Madurai also and returned north after a few months. He is said to have taken over 90,000 mounds of gold, unspecified numbers of jewelry and famed Pandyan pearls, 23,000 horses and 612 elephants. Thereafter, much of Tamil Nadu became part of Sultan Mohammad-bin-Tughlug’s empire of the Delhi Sultanate for a brief period (approximately 1327 to 1335).

Refer Nilakanta Shastri’s book “History of South India” & R.C.Majumdar. Romilla Thapar – Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300.

Jawaharlal Nehru said India’s history is a ‘bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads’, true the landmass has a history covering Indus Valley civilization, vedic period, 16 ‘republics’, foreign conquests by Persians and Greeks, the Mauryan Dynasty thriving under Ashoka the Great, Deccan and South India ruled by Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas, the Gupta Dynasty, migrations from Central Asia & Iran, migration of Zoraastrians (Parsis) Arabs, Mughals, occupation by French, Dutch, Portuguese and British make up many non-indigenous claims to the nation that is Bharat. Yet, what is clear is that the area today known as India christened by colonial British was never the area that came under any Indian dynasty or foreign rulers. Neither did these dynasties call their empires ‘India’ at any given time.

Shenali D Waduge