India before British Invasion – Dharampal’s findings

Its getting more and more clear that the real history of india is not what we study.  Particularly the works of dharamapal, had enlightened many of the young  indians of our real history.  Atleast, it has proved that what we learn about our history is not true.

Just presenting the works of dharampal in bullet points. (More about dharampal in www.dharampal.net)

• To the British darkness and ignorance had wholly different meanings and to the majority of them, these terms conveyed not any ignorance of arts and crafts or technology, or aesthetics but rather the absence of the knowledge of Christianity and its scriptural heritage.

• Peasants, artisans, those engaged in the manufacture of iron and steel, or in the various processes of its flourishing indigenous textile industry, or its surgeons and medical men, even many of its astronomers and astrologers belonged to this predominant section i.e. Sudras is unquestionable.

•   Some of the important changes brought about the British were (i) revenue enhancement and centralization, (ii) attempts at breaking the sense of community (geographical, or based on occupation or kinship) amongst the people of India, (iii) reducing their consumption to the minimum through higher taxation and lowering of wage rates, and (iv) an imposition of newer concepts of property rights and laws.

• They created a system of landlordism, ryotwari and peasant indebtedness.

• Deliberate & planned lowering of the wages of Indians.

Caste

• When the British began to conquer India, the majority of the rajas in different parts of India had also been from amongst such castes which have been placed in the sudra varna.

• Yet it can, perhaps also be argued that the existence of caste has added to the tenacity of Indian society, to its capacity to survive and after lying low to be able to stand up again.
• The British demonized caste because it stood in the way of their breaking Indian society, hindered the process of atomization, and made the task of conquest and governance more difficult.
• Today’s backward classes or Sudras cultural and economic backwardness is post 1800 due to impact of British economic policies.
• Madras Presidency 1822 survey showed sudras and castes below formed 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the total students in the Tamil speaking areas.
• Some of today’s Bihar’s notified tribes were whose ancestors were warriors and gave unceasing battle to the British till they got exhausted and succumbed to the overwhelming British power. Besides being warriors, their main occupations are said to have been of ironsmith (Iuhar) etc.

Agriculture

•         In 1804 according to The Edinburgh Review wages of the Indian agricultural laborer were also much more than British counter part.

•         There is a paper by Capt. Halcott on the drill plough employed in south India. He has said that he never imagined a drill plough considered as a modern European invention, at work in remote village in India

•         High Yields were on account of the variety of seeds available to the Indian peasant, the sophistication and simplicity of his tools, and the extreme care and labor he expended in tending to his fields and crops.

Industry

• Around 1800 India had 15-20 lakh weavers with mining being major industrial activity. Due to British policies by 1820 Indian industry was on its knees.
• There are accounts of the Indian process of making steel which was called ‘wootz’. The British experts who examined samples of ‘wootz’ sent to them by one Dr. Helenus Scott have commented that it is decidedly superior compared in any other steel they have seen.

•       Incidentally, modern plastic surgery in Britain is stated by its inventor to have been derived from and developed after the observation and study of the Indian practice from 1790 onwards.

• Because of the British desire to invest newly acquired British capital, a new structure of industrialization began to be established in various parts of India, especially round Calcutta and Bombay, by about 1880.
• The larger proportion of the historical and traditional professionals of Indian Industry however, even today, work outside the modern industrial complex, and mostly work individually and on their own. In the idiom of today they would form a fairly large proportion of the ‘Backward’ and ‘Other Backward’ castes.
• According to current findings the India-China region produced around 73 per cent of the industrial manufactures of the world around 1750.

•        Cloth was manufactured in practically all the 400 districts. Many districts of south India had 10,000 to 20,000 looms in each district even around 1810. Also India had some 10,000 furnaces for the manufacture of iron and steel. Indian steel was considered of very high quality and in the early decades of the nineteenth century, it was being used by the British for the making of surgical instruments.

• In 1763 smallpox was consciously and deliberately introduced in North America by the British military commander to kill local population.

•    One of the major characteristics of India has been its emphasis on communities based on shared localities as well as relations of kinship termed as jatis, in contrast to the preference for individuation in non-Slav Europe. It was complementarities and relatedness amongst groups within localities, and more so within regions, which has shaped India’s polity for the past two thousand years and more. This interrelatedness and the consensus, which grew out of it, seem to be the major elements that define the Indian concept of dharma.

•  India needs to focus on agriculture, education, forging close relations with the Buddhist countries of South East Asia & Far East but an important priority should be to re-establish self esteem, courage, community feeling, and collective freedom

Indian Caste System – Some real truths…

Just narrating my experience in my village that make re-think on many of the established dogmas of indian caste system…

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Recently in my village, kumbabishekam was done in a newly built temple by one of the community classified as SC.  When i went to my home, there was full of temple activities, with many local political persons sponsoring for the temple.  Spiritual songs were played in the loudspeaker and when the actual kumbabisham began, the brahmins continuously chanted mantras for long time. (Again, it was a thing to ponder, on how the brahmins, accused for all evils, can do kumbabishekam in the temple of a dalit community)

I enquired at some of the old people there, about the temple, and who conducts the event.  I was told, that this temple was built by that particular community people for over a year, by collecting funds from all those who are working in far-off places.

I asked them, if its for all the dalit people.  He told, that its only for that particular community, and other communities (classified as SC) are not allowed. 

Then I asked the reason, why all dalit people could not have a common temple.

He told, that every community has their own laws, and normally, one community people do not even drink water from another community people’s house.

Again I asked, why?

He told, if they did so, they would be isolated from their own community (i mean caste).

I was surprised.. 

I again asked..  This type of practices occur only among higher castes, and how could the dalit communities practice this among themselves?

“This type of practice exists in almost all communities (castes).  And infact, the Dalit communities have more stricter rules than the other BC communities.

I left the topic, and went to my home..  Later, i had the chance to interact with my neighbour, who belongs to a different dalit community.  I asked her, why dont she attend the kumbabishekam.  She told, its only for the particular community, and their people wont go there. And many of the above said things, she confirmed.

This is more of a new revelation to me, after i started observing various aspects of our society. 

The first question that came to my mind was, why does only a particular community (Mostly the brahmins) were victimised, while actually, the same practice exists in almost all of the communities (ie castes).

And i felt there should be some reason (whether good or bad) on why all the communities chose to remain isoloated, without freely mixing with others.

If possible, I will do another post after some analysis on this.

Typically, when i remember my earlier days, i never came across any of the words like upper caste, lower caste, SC or dalit, till i first encountered these in the text books (i think from 4th or 5th std).

One thing is clear to me..  There was no factual & accurate analysis of our society right from the independance by any of the authors.  Otherwise, there could not be so much contradictions i could see from what i read from the text books, and what i am observe from the current society, that has almost chaged a lot.

Its true, that there were lot of drawbacks in our society.  At the same time there is most probablity that many of the ills of our society that we read from text books, and other published books,  are extrapolated, and quoted out of context.

It became more clear to me, that all the controversaries so far  is aimed at dividing the indian society based on caste lines, and push it in to permanent turmoil. First started by the britishers, unfortunately continued by the politicians even after independance. (I dont want to elaborate more on this now.. leaving it to the readers to search for more details themselves.)

When we take periyar’s concepts, its true that he fought against the social evils.  But, how far did he try to eliminate the more serious impact of untouchability practiced by his own community people?

Before concluding, i would like to quote the following article on Dharampal by Gurumurthy.

http://www.newindpress.com/Column.asp?ID=IE620061115230938&P=old

“What is it that keeps the country down”, asked the speaker. A young man in the audience replied unhesitatingly: “Undoubtedly the institution of caste that kept the majority low castes and the society backward” and added “it continues”.

The speaker replied, “May be”. But, pausing for a moment, he added, “May not be”. Shocked, the young man angrily asked him to explain his “may-not-be” theory.

The speaker calmly mentioned just one fact that clinched the debate. He said, “Before the British rule in India, over two-thirds – yes, two-thirds – of the Indian kings belonged to what is today known as the Other Backward Castes (OBCs).

“It is the British,” he said, “who robbed the OBCs – the ruling class running all socio-economic institutions – of their power, wealth and status.” So it was not the upper caste which usurped the OBCs of their due position in the society?

The speaker’s assertion that it was not so was founded on his study – unbelievably painstaking study for years and decades in the archives in India, England and Germany. He could not be maligned as a ‘saffron’ ideologue and what he said could not be dismissed thus. He was Dharampal, a Gandhian in ceaseless search of truth like his preceptor Gandhi himself was, but a Gandhian with a difference. He ran no ashram on state aid to do ‘Gandhigiri’.

Admitting that “he and those like him do not know much about our own society”, the young man who questioned Dharampal – Banwari is his name – became his student. By meticulous research of the British sources over decades, Dharampal demolished the myth that India was backward educationally or economically when the British entered.

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(More about dharampal on www.dharampal.net)