Nationalist Representation - SPH

Studies in People’s History
Volume 6 Issue 1 June 2019
CONTENTS
Kesavan Veluthat/ The rise and fall of the kāvya project 5

Irfan Habib and Faiz Habib/ Mapping the growth of a Mughal
period township: Vrindavan 16
Amit Kumar Gupta/ Vidyasagar in popular perception:
Recovered through anecdotes 23
K.L. Tuteja/ ‘Hindi–Hindu’ discourse in late colonial Punjab 33
Farhat Hasan/ Nationalist representations of the Mughal state:
The views of Tilak and Gandhi 52
Sources
Elham Malekzadeh/ Iran and Rabindranath Tagore:
Information from files of the national archives of Iran 63
Debate
Iqtidar Alam Khan/ Akbar’s religious policy in the early phase
of his reign: A complex story 70
Survey
Nagendra Rao/ Vijayanagara in modern historiography: A survey 78
Review Article
Krishna Mohan Shrimali/ A new enterprise in Sanskrit
Lexicography87
Book Reviews
Tim Dyson, A Population History of India: From the First Modern

People to the Present Day by Shireen Moosvi 91
R.N. Misra, Ascetics, Piety and Power: Śaiva Siddhānta Monastic Art
in the Woodlands of Central India by Irfan Habib 93
Shahid Amin, Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior
Saint Ghazi Miyan by Shivangini Tandon 94
Anshu Malhotra, Piro and the Gulabdasis: Gender, Sect and Society
in Punjab by Shivangini Tandon 96
S. Irfan Habib, ed., Indian Nationalism: The Essential Writings
and Inquilab: Bhagat Singh on Religion and Revolution
by Irfan Habib 97
Erratum99
Visit http://journals.sagepub.com/home/sip
Free access to tables of contents and abstracts.
Studies in People’s History
Editorial board
Herausgeber
Irfan Habib, Professor Emeritus, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
CO-Editor
Shireen Moosvi, Formerly at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
Editorial Committee
K.S.M. Ishrat Alam, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

Amar Farooqui, Delhi University, Delhi
Ravindran Gopinath, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Iqtidar Alam Khan, Formerly at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
S. Ali Nadeem Rezavi, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
B.P. Sahu, University of Delhi, Delhi
Advisory Board
A.K. Bagchi, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata

Suraiya Faroghi, Professor of History, Isanbul Bilgi University, Turkey
D.N. Jha, Formerly at University of Delhi, Delhi
Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
Utsa Patnaik, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
M.N. Pearson, University of New South Wales, Australia
Aditya Mukerji, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Aniruddha Ray, Formerly at Calcutta University, Kolkata
D. Rothermund, South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany
K.M. Shrimali, Formerly at University of Delhi, Delhi
Y. Subbarayalu, Pondicherry University, Puducherry
Romila Thapar, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Eugenia Vanina, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
M. Witzel, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
NOTE: The Editorial Board deeply regrets the passing away of
distinguished member of the Advisory Board, Professor Aniruddha Ray
(Kolkata). Our Journal offers condolences to the bereaved.
Aims and Scope
Studies in People’s History embraces all aspects of History under the broadest of
definitions, but always bearing in mind their relationship with society at large.
The journal is peer reviewed and aspires to an adequate level of detailed research
and theoretical discussion. Papers on the history of classes, and other social
groups, gender history, and the National Movement are especially welcome. The
journal covers all periods of Indian history (i.e., the entire past of present-day
South Asian nations plus Afghanistan), but would also include papers on other
countries, especially such as may be concerned with world-wide movements
that also affected India (e.g., language shifts, technology transfers, feudalism,
capitalism, colonialism, genesis of modern ideas) or with comparative history
(e.g., in spheres of political structures, forms of thought, trends in art). The
journal could include surveys of work done on particular fields, besides reports or
commentaries on textual sources including inscriptions and archival documents.
–
The rise and fall of the kavya project
Kesavan Veluthat
The Rāmāyana of Vālmīki is said to be the ‘first kāvya’ (poem) in Sanskrit, but the age of its
compilation is uncertain. The Junagarh inscription of the Śaka ruler Rudradāman, ad 150,
is the first datable Sanskrit poem belonging to the category of praśastis. Praśastis became
increasingly common subsequently as a tool of flattery and means of monarchical legitimisation.
In time it became normal for every sovereign to have a praśasti composed for himself, so that
inscriptions carrying praśastis tended to become more and more numerous. The Harṣacarita of
Bāṇa shows how long texts could carry this form of literature, which, in turn, would influence
the style and similes of subsequently inscribed praśastis. The Palam Baoli inscription (1,276)
shows how a praśasti could now be compiled without the court of the ruler (in this case Sultan
Balban) being aware of it. Obviously, praśastis lost their political utility. Although subsequently
too praśastis were composed, their legitimising role seems to have been over now. This boded
ill for the kāvya form as well.
Keywords: kāvya, praśasti, Rudradāman, Hariṣena, Harṣacarita, Palam Baoli inscription
Historians are trained to look at inscriptions and literary texts, first and foremost,
as so many ‘sources’ for writing history. In the field of Indian history, it must be
acknowledged that historians have used both categories in working out details of
the political history of dynastic successions, wars and conquests, economic and
social history of the means and relations of production, social history including
that of castes and other modes of social differentiation, cultural history of various
kinds—all have been brought out with great clarity by more than one-and-a-half
century of the labour of scholars of different descriptions—epigraphists, historians
and scholars of literature. While there is no doubt that all this is a very legitimate
exercise, there is a less frequently attempted exercise, namely, reading such ‘sources
of history’ with a literary sensibility, just as what are considered as pieces of pure
literature are rarely read with a sense of history. In this article, therefore, an attempt
is made to see inscriptions and literature in Sanskrit from this point of view, that
is, reading sources of history with literary sensibility and pieces of literature with
a sense of history.
It is well known that, linguistically speaking, Sanskrit is a language included
in the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Its first
occurrence in any considerable manner is in the Ṛigveda. Even though there are
many brilliant poetic flashes in that oeuvre, it may not be included in the category
of ‘literature’, since its purpose and function are ritual. Of the six ancillaries or
‘limbs’ of the Vedas, that is, the Vedāṅgas, four are related to the study of language
Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 5–15

SAGE Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC/Melbourne
DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834788
6 / Kesavan Veluthat
in one way or the other: śikṣā (the science which teaches proper articulation and
pronunciation of Vedic texts), vyākaraṇa (grammar), chandas (metrical science)
and nirukta (explanation or etymological interpretation of a word). Curiously,
however, none of these or anything else in their period concerns itself with rheto-
ric, poetics or such other subjects remotely connected with literary appreciation,
notwithstanding chandas coming close to it. The answer to a ‘why’ in this regard
is simple: The Vedas, which include the mantras and brāhmaṇas, are necessarily
concerned with ritual; there is no point in looking for pure literature in the form of
kāvya or nāṭaka or other items of profane literary activities in that sacred world.
It is usually held that Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa is the first kāvya. The colophons at the
end of every chapter say this unequivocally: ityārṣe vālmīkīye ādikāvyē, meaning,
‘thus in the first poem (ādikāvya) of sage Vālmīki’. In reality, however, the Rāmāyaṇa
has to be viewed, along with the Mahābhārata, as an itihāsa. Considering the fact that
the claim that the Rāmāyaṇa is a kāvya occurs in the colophon, which is later than the
text and there is much doubt surrounding its authorship and date, it is questionable
whether the Rāmāyaṇa really inaugurated the tradition of kāvya in Sanskrit. For one
thing, what are described by rhetoricians as kāvyaguṇas are hard to seek there, with
all its beautiful poetic qualities. Aśvaghoṣha, who has been acknowledged as the
author of the first mahākāvya in Sanskrit, has the following couplet1:
vālmīkirādau ca sasarja padyam jagrantha yanna cyavano maharṣiḥ

cikitsitaṃ yacca cakāri nātriḥ paścāttadātreya ṛṣirjagāda.
The crucial part is ‘In the beginning, Vālmīki created verse’. It will be instruc-
tive to read it closely: The word he uses to describe what Vālmīki composed
is padya (verse), not kāvya (poetry). Surely, this usage is extremely significant,
particularly because he could have very well used kāvya in the place of padya if he
had meant it that way, without any violation whatsoever to the metre. Even if we
accept that Rāmāyaṇa was indeed a kāvya, the question still remains: Was it really
the first one. If it was, which are the links that carried the chain forward? We have
no answer. It is difficult to identify Rāmāyaṇa’s successors in the kāvya tradition.
In this context, it is significant that, leaving out the still enigmatic Harappan
writing, inscriptions that can be read begin to make their appearance in India from
the time of the Mauryas. They are in Prākṛit. It is only in the first century BC,
long after the age when Sanskrit made its appearance on the subcontinent, that
inscriptions in Sanskrit begin to make their appearance. This has been looked upon
as a ‘paradox’. It is not, however, strange that the emergence of kāvya or ornate
poetry in Sanskrit, going beyond ritual, is coeval with this appearance of Sanskrit
inscriptions. Even in the age of the Mauryas, although Sanskrit had gone beyond
the trayī (the three Vedas) of ritual and was being used as a vehicle of expression
1
Buddhacarita, pp. 1, 43, http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gret_utf.htm#AsvBc accessed on
4 September 2018.

The rise and fall of the kāvya project / 7
for ānvīkṣikī (‘logic, logical philosophy, metaphysics’), daṇḍanīti (‘administration

of justice, judicature’) and vārtā (‘an account of things that happened’),2 a fifth
item, namely, literature, comes up as pañcamī sāhityavidyā only much later. The
weight of evidence is in favour of putting even the very first text of daṇḍanīti, the
Arthaśāstra, to the post-Mauryan centuries. In any case, scholars are in agreement
that the earliest kāvyas in Sanskrit are the Soundarananda and Buddhacarita of
Aśvaghoṣa, who was patronised by Kaniṣka, the Kuṣāṇa ruler (second century ad).
It is not quite a coincidence that the famous Junagarh inscription of the Śaka king,
Rudradāman, is more or less of the same period.
The Junagarh inscription, which is the first of what can be described as praśastis
in Sanskrit, records how the beautiful Sudarśana lake had become almost a desert
and ugly to look at on account of huge breaches in the embankment as a result of a
storm followed by torrential rain and a deluge. Rudradāman got it repaired, in spite
of the advice of his ministers to the contrary. I quote a portion of it in the original,
in order to show the effect which will be lost in translation3:
... sṛṣṭavṛṣṭinā parjjanyena ekārṇṇavabhūtāyām iva pṛthivyām kṛtāyām girerūrja-

yataḥ suvarṇasikatāpalāśinīprabhṛtīnāma nadīnām atimātrodvṛttairvvegaiḥ
setum... mānānurūpapratīkāramapi giriśikharatarutaṭāṭṭālakopatalpadvāraśa-
raṇochchhraya-vidhvamsinā yuganidhanasadṛśaparamaghoravegena vāyunā
pramathitasalilavikṣipta-jarjjarīkṛta... kṣiptāśmavṛkṣagulmalatāpratānam
ānadītalādityodghāṭitam āsīt...
It reads thus in Kielhorn’s translation:
When by the clouds poring with rain the earth had been converted, as it were,
into one ocean by the excessively swollen floods of the Suvarṇasikatā, Palāśinī
and other streams of mount Ūrjayat, the dam…, though proper precautions
[were taken], the water—churned by a storm which, of a most tremendous fury
befitting the end of a mundane period, tore down hill-tops, trees, banks, turrets,
upper stories, gates and raised places of shelter—scattered, broke to pieces, [tore
apart]…,—with stones, trees, bushes and creeping plants scattered about, was
thus laid open down to the bottom of the river.
Again,
āgarbhātprabhṛttyavihatasamuditarājalakṣmīdhāraṇāguṇataḥ ssarvvavarṇ-
air-abhigammya rakṣaṇārtha patitve vṛtena āprāṇochchhvāsātpuruṣavadhani-
vṛttikṛta-satyapratijjñena anyatra samgrāmeṣvabhimukhāgatasadṛśaśatruprah-
2
ānvīkṣikī trayī vārtā daṇḍanītiśceti vidyāḥ. R.P. Kangle, ed., The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra, Delhi,
1969, Part I, 1.2.1, p. 4. Sāhityavidyā was recognized only much later.
3
For the text and translation, see Kielhorn, ‘Junagarh Inscription of Rudradaman, the Year 72’,
Epigraphia Indica, VIII (1905–06), pp. 36–49.
Studies in People’s History, 6, 1(2019): 5–15

araṇa-vitaraṇatvāviguṇaripu...śaraṇadena dasyuvyāḷamṛgarogādibhir-
anupasṛṣṭapūrvva-nagaranigamajanapadānām svavīryyārjitānāmanuraktasarv-
vaprakṛtīnām pūrvvāparākarāvantyanūpanivṛdānarttasurāṣṭra... kachchhasindh
usauvīrakukurāparāntaniṣādānām samagrāṇām tatprabhāvādyartthakāmaviṣay-
ānām patinā sarvvakṣatrāviṣkṛta vīraśabdajātotsekāvidheyānām yaudheyānām...
Translation: He who, because from the womb he was distinguished by the

possession of undisturbed consummate royal fortune, was resorted to by all
castes (varµa) and chosen as their lord to protect them; who made, and is true
to, the vow to the latest breath of his life to abstain from slaying men, except in
battles; who showed compassion…not failing to deal blows to equal antagonists
meeting him face to face; who grants protection of life to people repairing to
him of their own accord and those prostrating themselves before him; who is the
lord of the whole eastern and western Akārāvantī, the Anūpa country, Ānarta,
Surāṣṭra, Svabhra, Maru, Kaccha, Sindhu-SauvIra, Kukura, Aparānta, Niṣāda
and other territories gained by his own valour, the towns, marts and rural parts
of which are never troubled by robbers, snakes, wild beasts, diseases and the
like, where all subjects are attached to him….
The importance of the Junagarh inscription goes beyond it being the first of the
praśastis in ornate Sanskrit. Sheldon Pollock observed:
Rudradāman’s text marks a true break in cultural history. For the first time, self-
consciously expressive Sanskrit, with all the enormous authority, power, and
cultural value garnered by the very fact of its centuries-long monopolization
and ritualization, was used in a public space, in bold letters for all to see, for
the self-presentation of a living overlord.4
The chronological coincidence of the Śaka inscription and the Kuṣāṇa-patronised

kāvya poetry, both firsts in their fields, raise a very important question. For one thing,
this coincidence does not appear to be an accident. In this context, it is important to
remember that the Sātavāhanas and even the early Pallavas, who are presented as
promoters of orthodox Vedic culture, preferred Prākṛt to Sanskrit for their inscrip-
tions. The fact that the Sātavāhana-patronised Gāthāsattasaī is in Prākṛt, too, may
be borne in mind here. Why is it that it took non-Vaidic, non-Brāhmaṇic, rulers such
as the Kuṣāṇas and Śakas to patronise Sanskrit and inaugurate the kāvya tradition
in that language, while the orthodox dynasts such as the Sātavāhanas and Pallavas
still used Prākṛt for recording earthly transactions? Could it be that the orthodox
‘Hindu’ rulers reserved Sanskrit for sacred purposes, as a language of ritual, and
that they employed Prākṛt for profane purposes, without ‘polluting’ the ‘language
of gods’ by using it for earthly, political purposes?
4
Sheldon. Pollock, The Language of Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and Power in
Premodern India, Berkeley, Los Angles and London, 2006, p. 69.

Be that as it may. Sanskrit never had to look back. To use the metaphor of Pol-
lock, the language of gods descended to the world of men and was used in profane
business in the innumerable praśastis and kāvyas, both of the dṛśya and śrāvya
variety, in the royal courts.5 Sanskrit thus developed into arguably one of the rich-
est vehicles of literary expression in the world. Here we can see poetry and polity
freed, deriving support and patronage from each other. The use of figures of speech,
to embellish meaning and sound, the arthālaṅkāra and the śabdālaṅkāra, carried
it forward consummately in a remarkable manner. There are many examples to
show this from inscriptions. I quote from the seventh-century Aihole inscription
of the Cālūkyan king, Polakeśin II.6
nānāhetiśatābhighātapatitabhrāntāśvapattidvipe
nṛtyatbhīmakavandhakhaḍgakiraṇajvālāsahasre raṇe |
lakṣmīrbhāvitacāpalāpi ca kṛtā śauryēṇa yenātmasād
rājāsījjayasiṃhavallabha iti khyātaścalūkyānvayaḥ ||
Kielhorn’s translation: There was, of the Chalukya lineage, the king named
Jayasiṃha-vallabha, who in battle—where horses, foot-soldiers and elephants,
bewildered, fell down under the strokes of many hundreds of weapons, and
where thousands of frightful headless trunks and flashes of rays of swords were
leaping to and fro—by his bravery made Fortune his own, even though she is
suspected of fickleness.
Further,
tāvattacchatrabhaṅge jagadakhilamarātyandhakāroparuddhaṃ
yasyāsahyapratāpadyutitatibhirivākkrāntamāsīt prabhātam |
nṛtyadvidyutpatākaiḥ prajavini maruti kṣuṇṇaparyyantabhāgair-
ggarjjadbhirvvārivāsairaḷikulamalinaṃ vyōma yātaṃ kadā vā |
Kielhorn’s translation: Then, on the subversion of that rule encompassed by

the darkness of enemies, the whole world grew light again, invaded as it were
by the lustrous rays of His irresistible splendour. Or when was it that the sky
ceased to be black like a swarm of bees with thundering clouds, in which flashes
of lightning were dancing like banners, and the edges of which were crushed
in the rushing wind?
It is not for nothing that Ravikīrti, the author of this praśasti, boasted
that he had attained the fame of Kāḷidāsa and Bhāravi by his poetic skill:
Ibid., p. 114.
5
For the full text and translation, F. Kielhorn, ‘Aihole Inscription of Pulikesin II, Saka saṃvat 556’,
6
Epigraphia Indica, VI(1) (1900–01), pp. 1–12.

kavitāśrita-kāḷidāsa-bhāravikīrtiḥ! Incidentally, the invocation of Kāḷidāsa and

Bhāravi here is significant in its own way: They were poets who had played with
the politics of poetry, and poetry of politics, in their compositions, the Raghuvaṃśa
and the Kirātārjunīya, respectively. The political character of the Raghuvaṃśa
has been written about by scholars in the past, too frequently to bear one more
attempt. I shall, however, say a word or two about Kirātārjunīya, which many may
not have studied.
It may be relevant here that in many Ganga inscriptions, Durvinīta, the Western
Ganga king, is stated to have written a commentary of the 15th canto of Bhāravi’s
poem, the Kirātārjunīya.7 The importance of this statement goes beyond the king or
his court poets making a claim that Durvinīta was an accomplished scholar, following
the prescriptions in courtly literature and the formulaic expressions of inscriptional
rhetoric. Durvinīta’s commentary is said to be on Canto 15, in which the subject mat-
ter is Arjuna’s single combat with Śiva, after Śiva’s bhūtas ran away. But the politi-
cal character of Bhāravi’s project goes far beyond the 15th canto, which Durvinīta
has commented on. It may be remembered here that Bhāravi’s is perhaps the first
‘perfect’ court epic or mahākāvya; it reworked the episode of Arjuna’s penance and
the subsequent combat with Śiva for getting supernatural weapons he could use in
(re)capturing power in the new political context of early medieval India. But the
distance that Bhāravi has covered from the episode as it occurs in the Āraṇyaparvan
of the Mahābhārata is not just aesthetic, it is permeated through and through with
a political mission. The transformation that the theme goes through at the hands of
Bhāravi is a study in itself which I do not intend to make here. But it is hard to miss
his employment of political thought dominant in the day—a pointer to the fact that
Bhāravi’s purpose was indeed political and that it was meant to legitimise the newly
emerging state. This becomes clear from the direct quotations from and indirect allu-
sions to the textbooks of statecraft such as the Arthaśāstra. It starts from the very first
verse of the kāvya, where a vanecara (‘forester’) in the guise of a varṇi (‘student’) is
employed as a spy.8 The dependence of Kirātārjunīya on the Arthaśāstra and other
textbooks of statecraft is clear all over in the text of the kāvya.
7
See, for example, statements like kirātārjunīya pañcadaśassargga-ṭīkākāro durvinītanāmadheyaḥ,
Hallegere copperplates of Shivamara I, dated Shaka 635, month of Jyeshtha, No. Md 35, Epigraphia
Carnatica 7, revised edition, and kirātārjunīya pañcadaśassargga-ṭīkākāro durvinītanāmadheyaḥ,
Devarahalli copperplates of Sripurusha, date Shaka 698, No. Ng 149, Epigraphia Carnatica, 7,
revised edition. Saligrama plates of Śrīpuruṣa dated in the first regnal year of the king has the following
comparable statement: avinītanāmadheyasya putrasya… kirātārjuniye pañcadaśasargga-ṭikākārasya
putrasya… No. Kn 48, Epigraphia Carnatica 5, revised edition. The Gummareddipura copperplates
make the following statement about Durvinīta: śabdāvatārakāreṇa devabhārat inibaddhavḍukthena
kirātārjunīye pañcadaśasarggatikākāreṇa durvinītanadheyena…. (K.V. Ramesh, Inscriptions of the
Western Gangas, New Delhi, 1984, No. 24, p. 96). See also Ramesh, op. cit., p. 81, for a similar state-
ment in another record. I thank Manu V. Devadevan for drawing my attention to these references.
8
It follows the advice of the Arthaśāstra to the last letter (Kangle, ed., Arthaśāstra, 1. 11,
2: paramarmajñaḥ pragalbhaśchātraḥ; 1. 12, 23: vane vanacarāḥ kāryāḥ śramṇāṭavikādayaḥ |
parapravṛtti-jñānārthāḥ śīghrāścāraparamparāḥ ||).

The histories of praśasti and kāvya are thus closely intertwined. Pollock has
shown how the theoretical restrictions on literary language spelled out so clearly
in Sanskrit discourses on kāvya find their objective correlate in inscriptional
practices, where the local languages (deśi) were denied any literary function. That
both praśasti and kāvya were located principally at political centres testify to the
consanguinity, in their structure and character, of culture and power in the first
millennium. So also, the expressive resources which a praśasti makes use of are
further evidence of its kinship with kāvya, for these are the sort employed when
language becomes literature.9
The inference is natural in that, through these two media of kāvya and praśasti—
or had these already merged into a single medium?—poets tried to lend the neces-
sary legitimacy to the newly emerging polities in the post-Mauryan period. A new
political culture, and with it a new cultural politics, had come to stay. As state
formation occurred in the regions in different parts of the subcontinent, where the
political culture was comparable to mutatis mutandis, this apparatus of legitima-
tion, tried for the first time in the Kuṣāṇa and Śaka states and tested and found
successful in the Gupta, Vākāṭaka and similar states that emerged in subsequent
periods, was used in the newly emerging states in the regions as well. The occur-
rence of praśastis in Sanskrit in Southeast Asia has to be seen and understood in this
context, not so much as some kind of a triumph of ‘Greater India’ or as the effect
of so many ‘cultural colonies’. Thus, the Sanskrit cosmopolis that Pollock speaks
of, stretching from the mountain ranges around in Peshawar in the northwestern
part of South Asia to Prambanam in Southeast Asia, is also to be seen as a function
of the emerging political culture which patronised, and was in turn legitimised
by, the new kāvya project in Sanskrit—in both literature and inscriptions. In fact,
it would be difficult to distinguish between inscriptions and literature here, as
witness is the play called the Pārijātamañjarīnāṭikā of Madana, inscribed on stone
in what called the Dhar Praśasti of Arjunavarman.10 It little mattered which medium
of recording was used—the purpose seems to have been achieved any way. Let us
take this opening verse of the Harṣacarita11:
namastuṅgaśiraścumbi candracāmaracārave |
trailokyavijayārambhamūlastambhāya śambhave ||
Author’s translation: Salutations to Śambhu, whose lofty head is made resplen-

dent as the flywhisk-like moon kisses it and who is that primeval pillar erected
in the beginning of the expedition to win the three worlds.
9
Pollock, op. cit., p. 134.
10
E. Hultzsch, ‘Dhar Prasasti of Arjunavarman: Parijatamanjari-natika of Madana’, Epigraphia
Indica, VIII (1905–06), pp. 96–122.
11
Harṣacarita, I, 1, http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/5_poetry/2_kavya/bhcarr_
au.htm, accessed on 5 September 2018.

We find this repeated in hundreds of inscriptions from Karnataka to Nepal from the
ninth or tenth centuries onwards. Polity, and royalty which presided over it, stood
validated comprehensively with the help of the kāvya project, whether the kāvya
was inscribed on stone or copper or written on palm leaves or bhūrjapatras or orally
transmitted and remembered. This continued for at least a millennium in different
parts of the country and in Southeast Asia. In the process, court poetry necessarily
acquired a stereotypical character about it, with all its conventional qualities.
It resisted change at every level. A formula developed for praśastis and other kinds
of court poems, and verses followed one another in regular sequence in a predicable
manner. In this stage the kāvya project seemed to have outlived its utility.
However, what is interesting is that, even after the structure of polity, which
demanded legitimation through what I have chosen to call the kāvya project,
underwent radical transformation, such works continued to be composed. What
we find in the famous Palam Baoli inscription, dated ad 1276, of the time of
Sultan Ghiyås]uddðn Balban, is a case in point.12 Recording the construction of a
step well in the village of Palam near Delhi by a trader called Uḍḍhara from Uchh
in Punjab, it is a praśasti of Balban, with no detail left out. It begins typically with
an invocation of Gaṇeśa and Śiva and goes on with two beautiful verses in praise
of Śiva before briefly recounting the history of the land of Haryana, which was
earlier ruled by the Tomaras and Chauhans and was now being ruled by the Śakas,
that is, the Turks.13
abhoji tomarairādau couhāṇaistadanantaraṃ |

hariyāṇakabhūreṣa śakendraiḥ śāsyate’dhunā ||
Pushpa Prasad’s translation: The land of Hariyāṇaka was first enjoyed by the
Tomaras and then by the Cauhānas. It is now ruled by the Śaka kings.
It goes on to give an authentic and accurate list of the succession of Sultans of

Delhi14:
ādau sāhabadīnastataḥ paraṃ khuduvadīnabhūpālaḥ |

jāto’sya samusadīnaḥ phērujasāhirababhūva bhūmipatiḥ ||
paścājjalāladīnastadanantaramajani moujadīnanṛpaḥ |
śrīmānalāvadīno nṛpativaro nasaradīnapṛthvīndraḥ ||
Pushpa Prasad’s translation: First came Sāhabadīna, then Khudavadīna, master

of the earth, Samusdīna, then Pherujsāhi, lord of the earth. After him Jalāladīna,
12
Pushpa Prasad, Sanskrit Inscriptions of Delhi Sultanate, 1191–1526, New Delhi, 1990, No. 4,
pp. 3–15.
13
Ibid., p. 8.
14
Ibid., p. 8.

and then was born Maujadīna, [then] the glorious, and noble king Alāvadīna,
and Nasaradīna, the lord of the earth.
Note that everything here is as it is in any of the innumerable praśasti inscriptions

in Sanskrit. What is more, the typical digvijaya (‘conquest of the four quarters’)
of Balban might have been part of any court poem or praśasti of any other early
medieval Indian king15:
yatsenāgrasaratturaṅgamakhuraprakṣepavikṣobhitā-
śśatrūnatra nivārayanti purato dūreṇa bhūreṇavaḥ |
so’yam saptasamudramudritamahīhārāvalīnāyakaḥ
śrīhammīragayāsudīnanṛpatissamrāṭ samujjṛmbhate ||
Pushpa Prasad’s translation: The dust raised by the hooves of whose cavalry
marching ahead of his army stops the enemies in front. He, the central gem in
the pearl necklace of the seven-sea girt earth, Nāyaka Śrī Hammīra Gayāsadīna,
the king and the emperor, reigns supreme.
Note the title of the Sultan: Ṣrī Hammīra! Nothing is left out, including the details
of the fate of the various rulers whom Balban is said to have encountered, in the
description of his digvijaya:
yasmin digvijayaprayāṇakapare gauḍā nirāḍambarā

āndhrā randhraparāyaṇā bhayavaśānniṣkeḷayaḥ keraḷāh |
karṇāṭā api kandarāśrayaparā bhraṣṭā mahārāṣṭrajā-
styaktorjā kila gurjarāḥ samabhavan lāṭā kirāṭā iva ||
Pushpa Prasad’ s translation: When he went forth on a military expedition, the

Gauḍas abdicated their glory; the Āndhras through fear sought the shelter of
holes; the Keralas forsook their pleasures; the Karnāṭas hid themselves in caves;
the Mahārāṣhṭras gave up their places, the Gurjjaras resigned their vigour and
the Lāṭas turned into Kirāṭas.
It may be noted that the known history of Balban’s rule, reconstructed from other,
more authentic sources, does not make any claim to such military engagements
as claimed in this record. Incidentally, therefore, it will be legitimate to ask ques-
tions on the veracity of such claims in the case of other praśastis, starting from
the Hāthigumpha inscription of Kharavela and Allahabad Pillar inscription of
Samudragupta, composed by Hariṣeṇa. That is, though, a different matter, not quite
relevant here for our immediate purpose.
15
Ibid., p. 9.

The stereotypical character of the Palam Baoli praśasti does not end with the
description of the putative digvijaya. The peaceful rule of the Sultan is described thus16:
gaṅgāsāgarasaṅgamaṃ pratidinaṃ prācyāṃ pradīcyāmapi

snātum sindhusamudrasaṅgamamaho yatsainyamādhāvati |
helāndolitapāṇikaṅkaṇaraṇatkārēṇa vārāṅganā
yāntyāyānti ca nirbhayā yadudayāccitrāmbarāḍambarā ||
Pushpa Prasad’s translation: He, whose legions daily traverses for bath the
earth both eastward to the confluence of the Ganges with the (Gangāsāgar) and
westward to the confluence of the Indus with the sea. He, under whose reign
courtesans, proudly dressed in many-coloured raiments, moved about without
fear filling the air with the tinkle of their bracelets produced by the wanton
movements of their hands.
And the efficiency of his protection is hailed thus17:
asmin rājani bibhrati kṣititalaṃ śeṣō’pi niśśeṣato

bhūbhāraṃ samapāsya vaiṣṇavamahāśayyāṃ padam samśritaḥ|
lakṣmīvskṣasi so’pi viṣnuradhunā prakṣipya rakṣāvidhau
cintāsantattimāpya digdhajaladhirvidrāvya nidrāyatē ||
Pushpa Prasad’s translation: The earth being now supported by this sovereign
Śeṣa, altogether forsaking the his duty of supporting the weight of the globe,
has betaken himself to the great bed of Viṣṇu; and Viṣṇu himself for the sake
of protection [sic], taking Lakṣmi on his breast, and relinquishing all worries,
sleeps in peace on the ocean of milk.
It is not difficult to see that these are formulae repeated in all such praśastis in
Sanskrit, whatever their provenance. Śeṣa taking his much-earned rest from his
responsibility of holding the Earth, or Viṣṇu rendered jobless as the king now
performs the function of protection, is all from the rich repertoire of the formulae
and stock expressions of Sanskrit praśasti poetry. The following passage from
the Veḷvikuḍi Plates of Māṟan Caḍaiyan is but one example of the former, where
the dynasty of the Pāṇḍyas is said to have given rest to Śeṣa, who is tired of the
burden of the Earth18:
viśvaṃbharābharaśrāntaśeṣaviśramakāraṇaṃ |
ākalpāntaṃ bhuvi stheyādanvayaḥ pāṇḍyabhūbhṛtāṃ ||
16
Ibid., p. 8.
17
Ibid., p. 9.
18
H. Krishna Sastri, ‘The Velvikudi Grant of Nedunjadaiyan: The Third Year of Reign’, Epigraphia
Indica, XVII(16) (1911–12), p. 298, v.2, ll. 2–3.

Author’s translation: May this lineage of the Pāṇḍya kings, which has given
rest to Śeṣa fatigued by carrying the weight of the earth, endure on this earth
until the deluge.
The kāvya project, as used in political legitimation in India, thus met with the same
fate as any ephemeral technique would in the long run when, as Arnold Toynbee
observed, it is idolised and loses its initial effect.
In reading inscriptions and literary texts, we will do well to bear in mind that
they were produced at specific historical conjunctures, as answers to specific needs.
The kāvya project with which I have been concerned with is a case in point. It was
launched when India witnessed the formation of regional monarchical states all
over the country, first under the Śakas and the Kushans. That formation acquired
standardisation in the centuries that followed during which some of the finest
specimens of kāvya, both in literary texts and in inscriptions, were produced at
the royal courts. True, the poets were seeking patronage and the kings could claim
fame and legitimacy in return. The project achieved its fulfilment by the time the
early medieval order had run its full course in the subcontinent. What followed were
repetitions and imitations, to the point of nausea. We can see that even after the kind
of polity, which demanded legitimation through the kāvya, had disappeared, apolo-
gies for kāvyas were still composed. Audrey Truschke has invited our attention to
Jain and Brahman writers authoring numerous Sanskrit praise poems addressed to
members of the Mughal elite. She has identified seven Sanskrit panegyrics, com-
posed by four authors, that were directed to individuals within the administrations
of Akbar (r. 1556–1605), Jahangir (r. 1605–27) and Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58).19 The
redoubtable Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja wrote Āsaphavilāsa between 1628 and 1641 to
honour Ås[af Khån, the imperial vizier and brother of Jahangir’s queen Nur Jahan.20
The kāvya project, both in inscriptions and in literary texts, became irrelevant and
lost what rhetoricians in Sanskrit called attractiveness or ramaṇīyatā, an essential
feature of poetry as Jagannātha Paṇḍita himself would identify in poetry in the
opening sentence of his celebrated work on rhetoric, Rasagaṅgādhara—namely
that poetry is speech dealing with attractive meaning,ramaṇīyārthapratipādakaḥ
śabdaḥ kāvyam.21 For, as is well known, ramaṇīyatā or attractiveness demands
newness in every moment22:
kṣaṇe kṣaṇe yannavatāmupaiti
tadeva rūpam ramaṇxiyatāyāḥ ||
19
Audrey Truschke, ‘Regional Perceptions: Writing to the Mughal Court in Sanskrit: Culture of
Encounters’, in Cosmopolitisme en Asie du Sud: Sources, itinéraires, langues, XVIe-XVIIIe Siècle, eds.
Corinne Lefevre, I.G. Zupanov, Jorge Flores, Paris, 2014, pp. 251–74.
20
Truschke, ‘Regional Perceptions’, p. 263.
21
Jagannātha Panditarāja, Rasagangadhara, Anana 1. http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_
sanskr/5_poetry/1_alam/jgrasg1u.htm, accessed on 5 September 2018.
22
Magha, Śiśupālavadha, IV, 17. http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/5_poetry/2_
kavya/maghspvu.htm, accessed on 5 September 2018.

Mapping the growth of a Mughal
period township: Vrindavan
Irfan Habib and Faiz Habib

This effort at mapping the growth of the township of Vrindavan, the famous holy place near
Mathura in Western Uttar Pradesh in Mughal times is an exercise in local history and geography
made possible by a number of documents surviving in the hands of the Gosa’ins (Goswamis) of
the Chaitanya sect at Vrindavan. We see how from around mid-sixteenth century temples began to
be constructed and kunjs (groves containing huts) began to be established in the vicinity of some
small earlier settlements (Nagla Nagu, Dosaich, Nagla Gopa, etc.), which ultimately became
parts of the single township of Vrindavan. The story we are able to trace shows how it will be a
mistake to hold the society and economy of that age to have been a static one.
Keywords: Vrindavan, Kunj Galī, Govind-dev temple, Madan Mohan temple, Gopinath temple, Rūp
Gosa’in, Jīv Gosa’in
Tradition that seems to be widely accepted today attributes to Shri Chaitanya the
identification in 1515 of a site on the right bank of the Yamuna river with the
Vrindāvaṇa of the Krishna legend which had hitherto been considered a place
outside of this world. It was, however, not apparently he but his followers who some
time later took practical steps to create a Vrindavan in this world. Jīv Goswāmi
in a Sanskrit poem written soon after Akbar’s death (1605) and inscribed on two
panels set up in the Govind-dev temple at Vrindavan acclaims his uncles Rūp and
Sanātan for initiating worship at Vrindavan that had been discontinued owing to the
onset of the Kali age; he does not mention their teacher, Shri Chaitanya.1 Mukhtār
Khān, Mughal Governor of the Province of Agra, in a general order (parwāna) in
1704 noted that it was ‘Rūp and Harīdās … [who,] leaving wordly life settled in
the village of Bindrāban, in the said pargana (of Mathura) at a time when it was
all forest and totally unpopulated, and established the headship and rules of their
sect of mendicants’.2
1
For text and translation of this inscription by G.N. Bahura, see M.H. Case. ed. Govindadeva: A
Dialogue in Stone, New Delhi, 1996, pp. 200–03.
2
Document in the Govind-dev collection in Vrindavan Research Institute (henceforth V.R.I.),
Vrindavan. Unfortunately, the photographic copies of the large collection of Vrindavan documents,
today scattered among various depositories, including some temple archives, that we have obtained
through the kindness of the late Dr Tarapada Mukherjee, do not often bear full particulars of their
present locations.
Professor Shireen Moosvi, working largely on the basis of the same material, has already examined
the process of the growth of the town of Vrindavan, in her article ‘Vrindavan: The Evolution of the
Town in Mughal Times’, in The Evolution of a Nation: Pre-Colonial to Post-Colonial, ed., D.N. Jha,

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834787
Mapping the growth of a Mughal period township: Vrindavan / 17
This is borne out by a remarkable Braj document, a sale deed with a Samvat
date equivalent to 31 March 1558. This deed recites that four panch (headmen)
of village Nagarā, duly named in the beginning, were now selling away land on
which the kunj of Rūp Gosā’in was situtated, along with other kunj’s, the Kunj
Galī (Galī meaning lane) forming the southern and western boundary of the land
sold, with the eastern boundary coming down to Kunj Galī. The Jamunā (Yamuna)
bank is noted as bordering the land on the north.3 (see the Map) This area was the
nucleus of the late Vrindavan, Kunj Galī still surviving as the name of a locality
within Vrindavan.4 The land originally belonged to the village Nagarā, for the
sellers were its panch or headmen. The initial purchaser was Alī Khān, headman
of village Sei, about 10 km away, who transferred the land simultaneously to the
famous Jīv Gosā’in, nephew of Rūp Gosā’in, at the same price. It is significant that
there is no mention of Vrindavan, under any of its variant names, in this document.
Apparently, the name was not in use.
The situation was, however, different when 11 years later, in 1569, the same
transaction needed to be dressed up in a Persian garb, apparently for legal
Delhi, 2014, pp. 223–33, being concerned largely with the process of urbanisation. Here we would be
concerned more with the geography of the settlement as it grew from a small set of huts and groves
into a town, territorially expanding the zone of habitation.
3
Rādhā Damodar Coll., two copies now in V.R.I., S. No. 5, Acc. No. 33 and S. No. 21, Acc. No.
37. This document forms No. 3 in Professor J.C. Wright’s file of Braj documents, containing the texts
as deciphered by him with his own translations of them. We are grateful to him for making copies of
these available to the first co-author. However, in his translation of Wright No. 3, ‘narrow lane’ needs
to be restored to the name in the original ‘Kunj Galī’.
The original sense of kunj is, of course, ‘an arbour, a bower; a grove’ (John T. Platts, Diction-
ary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English, S.V.). So as late as 1718, I‘timād ‘Alī Khān in his diary
(Mir’atu’l Ḥaqā’iq, Bodleian: Fraser 124, ff. 138b–139a), speaking of the Kunj Galī at Vrindavan,
says it contained ‘excellent bāghāt (gardens, groves) laid out by Hindus’. The sense of the grove
struck to the word kunj in legal documents, so that in the deed of gift of all his properties by Gob-
ind Charan Gosā’in to his successor Jagannāth as high priest of the Govinddev temple, he uses the
word manzil (building) to define ḥavelī or house, but qat̤ ‘a (plot of land) to define kunj (Govind-dev
Collection, Doc. Dated 15 January 1710). Clearly, until then, a kunj must have been visualised as
mainly a tree-filled plot of land containing a hut or cottage. But as the huts within the groves grew
into well-built houses, a sale deed of 1760 described the kunj sold as a kind of ḥavelī or house, ‘built
of baked brick and red sandstone, roofed with woodwork and wooden slabs, etc., with many trees
and a pucca well, in the Kunj mohalla, Vrindavan’ (National Archives [NAI], 2671/26). By late
nineteenth century the kunj at Vrindavan had simply become a particular kind of building: ‘disposed
in the form of a quadrangle, with an enriched gateway in the centre of one front and opposite it the
chapel, of more imposing elevation than the ordinary domestic apartments, which constitute the two
flanks of the square’ (F.S. Growse, Mathura—A District Memoir, 3rd ed., 1882, reprint, New Delhi,
1979, p. 264). In Ibid., p. 431, a shorter description is given of the kunj as ‘a building of elaborate
architectural design in the form of a cloistered quadrangle’.
4
F.S. Growse, Mathura, p. 271, where Kunj Gali is at No. 23 in the list of Vrindavan’s mohallas,
just next to Sewa Kunj.

18 / Irfan habib and Faiz habib
purposes.5 The sellers are the same, now designated muqaddams, the price and
the names of the successive buyers the same, and the boundaries the same with
Kunj Galī on two sides, the Yamuna on the north and the eastern boundary coming
down to Kunj Galī. The reference to Rūp Gosāin’s kunj is no longer thought worth
mentioning, but the major alteration is that the sellers instead of being headmen of
Nagarā are designated headmen of the village Bindrāban. In 1572 the same four
headmen, with one name added, describing themselves as muqaddams of village
Bindrāban, sell one further plot of land to Jīv Gosā’in with Kunj Galī bordering it,
again, but on the north and west and so keeping it away from the river.6
While these sale deeds show where the nucleus of Vrindāvan lay, to begin
with, that is. east of the Madan Mohan temple, other documents show that official
recognition of Vrindavan as a village also came soon enough.
The earliest surviving official recognition of Vrindavan seems to be offered in a
farmān of Akbar, of 5 Jumada II, 972 (8 January 1565) by which 200 bīghas of land
were given in in‘ām (tax-free grant) in village Bindrāban to Gopāl Dās, a priest of
the Madan Mohan temple.7 In October 1568, Akbar issued a farmān investing Jīv
Gosā’in with full authority over the management (adhikār) of the Madan Mohan
and Gobind-dev temples in ‘village Bindrāban’.8 This meant, given the sites of the
two temples, that ‘village Bindrāban’ covered much of the area along the southern
side of the Yamuna where it flows due eastwards for about 2 km before turning
south again.
As the settlement of Vrindavan expanded, the nomenclature of local sites became
more complicated. In a Braj sale deed of Samvat 1650/23 July 1593 the plot of land
sold is said to be situated in Pāṭī (Paṭṭī, strip of land) of Bhānā of Shri Gobindji
(Govind-dev temple).9 In another Braj deed of Samvat 1650/24 November 1593,
the sellers belonged to Nagū kī Nagarā and the land sold was surrounded by fields
(khet), including a field of the Govind-dev temple to its north.10 The name of
Vrindavan is not mentioned in either of the two sale deeds, the old Nagarā village,
now appearing as Nagarā of Gobindji in one document and of Nagū in the other.
In a Persian sale deed of January 1596, the land sold is said to be situated in the
village of Nagla Nagū, Paṭṭī Bhāna, the buyer being the adhikārī of the chief priest
of Gopīnāth temple, situated less than half a kilometre north of the Govind-dev
temple.11 This suggests that the limits, of Nagara (or Nagla) Nagū lay within what
is now the north-eastern part of the township of Vrindavan.
5 Rādhā Damodar Coll. No. 13 (VRI Sl. No. 56, Acc. No. 13).
6 Rādhā Dāmodar Coll., 145.
7 Madan Mohan Coll., 55.
8 V.R.I. Acc. No. 1.
9 Wright Collection, No. 4. Wright’s translation of the portion of the text relating to the land site
has some inaccuracies.
10
Wright Coll. No. 5.
11
International Institute of Vaishnav Studies (I.V.S.), xeroxed file, No. 28.

In January 1594 a significant legal document was prepared in which as many as

13 persons, describing themselves as residents of ‘village (mauẓa‘) Dosā’ij, Nagla
Nagū and Bhanān’ sold 4 biswas (1 biswa = 1/20 bīgha) of land of that village for
inclusion in Rāja Mān Singh’s garden, payment of the price being received from
Hardās (Harīdās).12 While we have already met Nagla (Nagarā) Nagū and Bhanān
(Bhānā) in earlier documents the reference here to Dosā’ij (usually written Dosā’ich
in later Braj documents) is the earliest one to it that we have been able to trace.13 The
Dusāyat Mohalla situated to the south-east of ‘Ghera Madanmohan’, in the Survey
of India’s Guide-Map of Vrindavan14 may reasonably be taken to represent the site
of the late-sixteenth century village of Dosā’ij. What is interesting is that Vrindavan
is not at all mentioned in this document. This was apparently because Dosā’ij, com-
bined with Nagla Nagū and Bhāna, was assumed to contain the locality of Vrindavan.
This is confirmed by the Braj text recording the same transaction a few months
later (August 1594), when the same thirteen sellers, describing themselves as panch
(headmen), also call themselves ‘Shri Vrindāvan kī Brajvāsī’.15 Four surviving sale
deeds, three of 1595 and one of 1597, recording purchases by Bhawānand, adhikarī
of Gopīnāth temple, place two of the plots purchased in village Dosā’ij and the other
two in ‘Dosāij Nagla Gopā’.16 The inclusion of Nagla Gopā in it would extend the
limits of the village Dosā’ij to the south-east, for according to a Braj document of
1598, a plot within ‘mau[ẓa] Dusā’ich, pāṭī Gopa’ bordered a vegetable plot within
village Rājpur, situated over a 11/4 km south of the Dusāyat Mohalla.17
That Dosā’ij was now officially the name of a very large area embracing what
later would be brought under Vrindavan is shown by the lists of temples of the
Mathura region assigned land grants in Akbar’s comprehensive farmān of 11 Sep-
tember 1598. Here, in its ẓimn (note on reverse), as many as seventeen temples
(out of thirty-five) are listed with grants assigned in village Dosā’ij, no reference
being made to Vrindavan. The temples included those of Madan Mohan, Gobind-
dev (‘Gobind-rāi’), Gopīnāth and Rādhāballabh, so that the ‘village’ of Dosāich
covered a very large area. Since the same farmān recorded a total of 469 bīghas ilāhī
of tax-free grants made to these temples within the limits of Dosāich, the ‘village’
must have contained at least 112.6 hectares of open land assigned in grants, besides
other agricultural land.18 It is therefore, not surprising that it contained within it
a number of hamlets. One such hamlet was the deh (‘village’) of Shrī Gopīnāth,
12
Govind Dev (G.D.) Collection.
13
It should be mentioned that I.V.S. 218 of exactly the same date, which also deals with a sale
transaction of land in Nagla Nagu, Pāṭṭī Bhāna, has a Braj version below the Persian, and in this version
the locality is put within ‘mau[za] Dochhāīchh’.
14
Guide Map of Mathura with inset of Vrindavan on scale 1:20,000, Survey of India, 1989.
15
Wright Coll., No. 6.
16
I.V.S. 208, 209A-B; 210; 180A-B & 168, in chronological order.
17
Wright Coll. No. 7.
18
The size of the bīgha-i ilāhi in terms of acres (and hectares) is worked out in Irfan Habib’s
Agrarian System of Mughal India, 3rd ed., New Delhi, 2017, p. 415.

grown around the temple, with its own panchāyat, or body of headmen, empowered
to sell village land, as seen in two sale deeds, one of 1599 and the other of about
the same time since the sellers named in it are the same as in the other deed.19
After Akbar’s death (1605), Dosā’ij seems to fade from official record, except
when (as is quite frequently seen to be the case) its name was recalled in connection
with land grants originally conferred in Akbar’s time in the village by that name.
Instead the name Bindrāban now begins commonly to be used. That Jahāngīr should
use this name when he describes his visit to its temples on 31 October 1619,20 may
be natural for this was the popular name of the place. But when Shahjahān, in
November 1634, issued a formal farmān rescinding a local ban on the sounding of
the gong in the Madan Mohan temple, he used the name Bindrāban for the village
where the temple was situated, not Dosā’ij. When in 1670 Aurangzeb destroyed
the Keshav Rāi temple in Mathura and imposed on Mathura the official name of
Islāmābād,21 he seems to have also conferred the name Mominābād on Vrindavan,
for a Persian sale deed concerned with a plot of land describes it as situated in
Nagara Gopīnāth within ‘village Bindrāban alias (‘urf) Mominābād’.22 However,
it was one thing to proclaim a new name and another to force it into popular use.
Even in official documents Mominābād continued to be treated as a mere adjunct
to the name Bindrāban, both being usually paired together (as was the case with
Mathura and its official alias Islāmābād).
Vrindavan, thus inheriting the large area of ‘village’ Dosāich, contained two
major territorial units, termed nagarā or nagla (both terms being used) formally
meaning ‘hamlets’, namely, Nagū and Gopā. Omitting references which do not
indicate either nagara’s limits, we may cite one document of 1695 and another
of 1698 which indicate that Nagara Nagū on the north bordered the Yamuna hav-
ing Chirghāt within its limits.23 Despite the numerous documents (at least fifteen
between 1605 and 1750) in which the name of Nagara Nagū occurs, its other limits
remain hard to determine. In a chaknāma (demarcation document) of blocks of
land forming the madad-i ma‘āsh grant of the head priest of the Madan Mohan
temple in village Rājpūr, prepared in 1692, one block (qat‘a No. 6) has an entry
showing that to the north of it was a field belonging to ‘Tulsī, resident of Nagla
Nagū’.24 Since the statement relates to the residence of the cultivator of the field,
this does not mean that the field itself lay within Nagla Nagū, though it does
19
I.V.S. 147 and 156.
20
Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Syed Ahmad, Aligarh, 1863–64, p. 279.
21
Sāqī Musta‘idd Khān, Ma’as̤ ir-i ‘Alamgīrī, ed. Agha Ahmad Ali, Bib Ind., Calcutta, 1870–73,
pp. 95–96.
22
Vrindavan Docs., photograph no. 60.
23
Renunciation of a claim on ownership of piece of land near Chirghāt, 1695 (Persian: Govind-dev,
Jaipur); and similar renunciation in Braj relating to land in Chīrghātvārī by the panch of Nagarā Nagū,
1698 (Wright 16).
24
Radhakund Coll., 138.

suggest that Tulsi’s residence could not have been very distant from his field, so
that Nagla Nagū must have extended considerably southward from Chirghat away
in the north on the Yamuna.
Another area also designated nagara or nagla in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was Gopā. We have seen that the name prefixed with designation Pāṭī
(Paṭṭī) occurs in a document of Akbar’s time as a part of mauẓa (village, Dosā’ich/
Dosā’ij), where it is shown as bordering a vegetable plot within village Rājpūr.
Nagla Gopa occurs as a village or sub-village in at least five documents belong-
ing to the period 1605–1750, but without adequate indication of the precise locale.
Broadly it may be inferred that it was to the south of Nagara Nagū.
It seems, that as the township grew within the broad area of the village (mauẓa‘)
designated Dosā’ij and, then, Vrindāvan, a name had to be given to the core of
the township. This was Bindrāban Khāṣ (Vrindāvan proper, so to say), the rest of
the pargana ‘Bindāban’ being covered by the paired name ‘Nagla Nagū o Gopā’,
treated as one village (qirya). This is brought out very well in an official chaknāma
of 1 August 1725.25 Incidentally, it shows that within Bindrāban Khāṣ there were
still present both cultivated fields and a mound of sand (thoda reg).
25
I.V.S. 207 & 213; another copy, I.V.S. 218.

We now begin to have descriptions, though rather brief, of Vrindāvan town.

About 10 September 1718 I‘timād ‘Alī Khān visited the town, saying it was
populated by Brahmans, and more significantly from our point of view, especially
mentioning Kunj Galī for the fine gardens or groves ‘laid out by Hindus’ that it
contained.26 Kunj Galī has survived as a mohalla or quarter of Vrindavan.27
In AH 1143/1730–1, Murtaẓā Husain ‘Allāhyār’ Bilgrāmī at a young age saw
Vrindavan and cherished the memory, when writing later (1782), of a concourse of
young people, men and women, in the evening, engaging in singing and repartees
and then returning home with lighted candles. He tells us that this gathering was
called gyān-gudrī.28 It is to be presumed that the meeting ground was the area called
Gyān Gudri, situated near the Yamuna River where the river completes its return to
a southward course not far from the Govind-dev temple situated further inland.29
Bilgrāmī adds that the bazaar was small (mukhtaṣir), but containing ‘twenty or
fifteen shops of grain dealers (baqqāl), betel leaf and flower sellers, etc.’30 There is
no indication of its exact location, but it could be that of the Purana Bazar marked
on the Survey’s Guide Map, south of Sewa Kunj and so near Kunj Galī.
26
Mir’ātū’l Ḥaqā’iq, Bodleian M.S.: Fraser 124 ff. 38b–39a
27
Growse, op. cit., p. 271. It may be the ‘long street’ that Tieffenthaler, visiting Vrindavan in 1754,
describes, without naming it. It was ‘adorned with handsome, not to say magnificent, buildings of
beautifully carved stone, which had been erected by Hindu Rajas and nobles’ (quoted in Growse,
p. 187). He was apparently unimpressed by the groves (the original kunjs); or these had by now largely
disappeared and so escaped notice.
28
Murtazā Ḥussain ‘Allāhyār’ Bilgrāmī, Ḥadīqatu’l Aqālīm, litho. Nawal Kishor, Luckow, 1879,
pp. 170–71.
29
‘Gyān Gudarī’ is first in the list of mohallas of Bindāban in Growse, op. cit., p. 271. He offers no
explanation of the name; and the sense given by S.W. Fallon for it, ‘the sage’s rags’ (A New Hindustani-
English Dictionary, s.v. gyān-gudṛī) can hardly refer to the kind of assemblage of which Bilgrāmī
speaks. It would seem that Gyān-gudrī was simply the name of the ground or area where the evening
event took place, and so survives as the name of a locality.
30
Murtazā Ḥussain ‘Allāhyār’ Bilgrāmī, op. cit., p. 171.

Vidyasagar in popular perception:
Recovered through anecdotes
Amit Kumar Gupta

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar is one of the greatest figures of Bengal Renaissance, celebrated for
his learning, promotion of education and pursuit of social reform. A number of anecdotes about
him circulated among the middle class (Bhadralok) as well as the poorer sections of people. The
article examines, through a selection of such anecdotes, what kinds of stories about Vidyasagar
particularly caught the public eye, without delving into the accuracy of the specific pieces of
public memory. What is significant here is that his personality, rather than his causes, forms
the prominent theme in these anecdotes.
Keywords: Vidyasagar, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, Bhadralok, Neel Darpan, anecdotes, widow

remarriage
A legend in his life-time, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91) is respectfully

remembered in Calcutta, Bengal, and all over India for his commitment to the cause
of women’s uplift and for undertaking steps for promoting education, especially
female education. Apart from founding a good number of schools (some for girls)
in the districts (as Special Inspector of Schools) between 1855 and 1857, he ran
the first indigenous college for higher education under the Calcutta University
(the Metropolitan Institution) from 1868 onward. Most importantly, Vidyasagar
dedicated himself to the campaign for widow remarriage from 1855, got the
act permitting the marriage of Hindu widows passed in 1856 and succeeded in
arranging the first widow-remarriage in 1856 itself. He dwelt as early as 1850 on
the abuses of child marriage, and also embarked on an agitation in 1871 against
Kulin polygamy.1 In 1891 he demanded that the consummation of marriage before
puberty be declared a penal offence.
These activities of Vidyasagar were discussed widely among the educated, upper
caste Bhadralok (gentlemen) in Bengal throughout the later half of the nineteenth
century. The discussions were carried on in both Bengali and English press, and
in contemporary literature. Four full-length biographies were published roughly
1
The practice of marrying off daughters usually, by payment, to men of high caste, previously
married (rather much married) husbands, for the sake of the family’s glory by a lift in the caste-ladder
was widespread among well-to-do Brahmins of nineteenth-century Bengal.

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834789
24 / Amit Kumar Gupta
within a decade of his death and innumerable stories circulated about him. These
tales about him hardly ever cover matters of education. And only a few are
concerned with what he rated himself to be the greatest deed of his life—widow
remarriage—as compared to the flood of tales illustrating other aspects of his
personality. Spread perhaps by the middle ‘poorer and less successful substratum’,2
these accounts about Vidyasagar seem to have spread extensively among ordinary
people. In Calcutta poor citizens constituted nearly three quarters of the city’s
total population, while Muslims formed about a third of the number of Bengali
Hindus.3 The picture was more or less similar in the district towns of Bengal,
as well as in its countryside—and barring the Zamindars and money-lenders—
it contained an overwhelming number of socially backward population—poor
peasants, sharecroppers and agricultural labourers.
In the poor men’s world neither the issue of girls’ schooling and child marriage
nor that of Kulin polygamy and widow remarriage (all issues for educated, upper-
caste Hindu Bhadralok) seem to have figured prominently. They hardly entertained
any hope for educating their daughters—certainly not ahead of the sons, the future
bread-winners—and could only marry girls off a little late after they were able to
pick up familiarity with the essential domestic chores. Since they did not belong
to the prosperous classes, the lowly remained free from the ill-effects of polygamy.
Such was also the position of the lower order in relation to the problem of widow-
hood and widow remarriage. It often happened that widows of the lower castes,
would keep Sanga or male company (cohabiting with the men of their choice
or ‘adopted husbands’).4 Even so, street singers sometimes sang in appreciation
of Vidyasagar for his endeavours to get widows of the society’s upper category
remarried. They sang: ‘Long Live Vidaysagar! He has submitted a report to the
headquarters recommending remarriage of widows’, and again: ‘Vidyasagar will
get hold of widows and make them remarry’.5
If what Vidyasagar himself thought to be the principal missions of his life did
not find the place they deserved in popular estimation, what other issues about
this remarkable personality could be there to sway those belonging to the lower
mass of society? He was a man of high caste and a Pandit (though as Principal
of the Sanskrit College he was liberal enough to have allowed admission of men
from castes other than Brahmans and Vaidyas).6 Yet in popular vision he seems to
have appeared as a God-chosen Messiah to lead the down-trodden from darkness
to light. It is true that in the views of many of his contemporaries, Vidyasagar was
2
S. Sarkar, ed., ‘Vidyasagar and Brahmanical Society’, in Writing Social History, Oxford, New
Delhi, 1997, p. 236.
3
S. Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Calcutta, Calcutta, 1989, pp. 61, 116.
4
Ibid., p. 56.
5
Ibid., p. 114.
6
A. Sen, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and his Elusive Milestones, Calcutta, 1977, p. 28.

Vidyasagar in popular perception: Recovered through anecdotes / 25
either an agnostic7 or a non-believer,8 who had no faith in Holy Kashi and Baba
Vishwanath.9 It is difficult to miss Vidyasagar’s touch of sarcasm on hearing
Ramakrishna Paramahansa say about his being able eventually to reach the ocean/
sagar after crossing all the narrow canals, water tanks and ponds in the way: ‘When
you have managed somehow to come’, responded Vidyasagar, ‘then there is no
alternative to your carrying anything but a few cans of saline water, since this ocean
contains nothing but saline water’?10 It is known now that he had attended the first
meeting of the Bengal Temperance Society in 1864 for discouraging alcoholism,
but refused to play any important role in its proceedings despite all requests.11 More
significantly, he welcomed the formation of the Indian Association for fulfilling ‘a
major need’ of the people, but turned down requests for becoming its president12;
or to assume the role of a leading nationalist. It is true that being a government
servant during the Rising of 1857, he allowed the Sanskrit College premises to be
used as quarters of the newly arrived British soldiers.13 Perhaps, as an admirer of
the modernising British Raj, he distrusted in 1857 the rebels’ tendency for reviving
the past order. Vidyasagar even branded the early activities of the Indian National
Congress as ‘bragging, making speeches and thus liberating India’, and felt that
none seemed to have ‘any concern for the thousands of daily victims of death by
starvation’.14 He asked those enthusiasts who approached him to join the Congress
‘whether they would be ready to take up arms for attaining freedom’, and, observing
their discomfiture, he curtly desired to be left out of the Congress.15 Yet Vidyasagar
had great concern for the poor. He opened for some time a community kitchen
at his own expense in his native village (Birsingha) during the famine of 1867.16
He used to visit Karmatar in the Chhota Nagpur region off and on and came close
to the Santal villagers there. He was reported to have declared his preference for
the company of ‘my uncivilised Santals to your sort of respectfully dressed men of
Aryan descent’17; and shortly before his death he spoke of the Santals dying around
in hunger while he himself was being so well fed.18
7
He was an agnostic, for example in the opinion of Debendra Nath Tagore (A. Tripathy, Vidyasagar:
Traditional Moderniser, Calcutta, 1998, p. 119).
8
This is according to Krishnakamal Bhattacharya (I. Mitra, Karunasagar Vidyasagar, Calcutta,
1971, p. 634, in Bengali).
9
Sen, op. cit., p. 157.
10
C. Bandyopadhyay, Vidyasagar; in Bengali, reprint, Calcutta, 1987, p. 468.
11
Ibid., p. 288.
12
P. Roy, Vidyasagar O Samajik Byaktitwa; in Bengali, Calcutta, 1986, p. 130.
13
Ibid., p. 147.
14
I. Mitra, Karunasagar Vidyasagar; in Bengali, reprint, Calcutta, 1977, p. 11. Sen, op. cit., p. 132.
15
K. P. Chattopadhyay, ‘Vidyasagar Prasange’, in Karunasagar Vidyasagar; in Bengali, ed. I. Mitra,
Calcutta, 1971, p. 12.
16
Bandyopadhyay, op. cit., pp. 422–33; Sen, op. cit., p. 137.
17
Bandyopadhyay, op. cit., pp. 518–20; Sarkar, op. cit., p. 242.
18
Bandyopadhyay, op. cit., p. 475.

It is likely that Vidyasagar’s views on such seminal issues of religiosity, polity

and society—were not adequately known to the general public, not even faintly to
its multitudinous lower strata. But then, what did the common man and woman—
those on the streets and in the ghettos—find in Vidyasagar to remember him so
fondly and for such a long time through numerous anecdotes?19 Can anecdotes then
throw light on certain neglected historical situations or half-hidden aspirations of
those among whom they circulate?20 If they do, the anecdotes could be accepted as
‘rooted in the real’, with ‘minimal’ units of ‘historiographic’ facts.21 Even thereafter,
should they remain at all supernumeraries to mainstream historians as ‘rhetorical
embellishments, illustrations or moments of relief from analytical generalisations,
but methodologically nugatory’?22 In history sources of information play crucial
roles in all reconstructions of the past. Of the sources of modern Indian history, the
‘primary’ ones (official and non-official documents, newspapers and periodicals of
the time and even oral testimonies communicated later) are considered relatively
more reliable than the ‘secondary’ sources (later reports, proceedings, gazettes and
publications, including autobiographies, biographies and books of various kinds).
The ‘secondaries’ are used for backing up the ‘primaries’ and then building upon
them our historical accounts—the task that oral testimonies once recorded also
help us to carry out. They do it slightly more convincingly perhaps than the second-
aries because of their being the products of contemporaneity and resembling—in
a way—the private papers (of individuals and organisations), often regarded
(after Lewis Namier) as sources of primary importance. The oral testimonies
are, however, somewhat deficient in authenticity because of their dependence on
personal memory and for being open to risks of exaggeration and bias. (Some
archival documentary sources were also created as records of spoken events, and
hence are ‘no less selective and biased’.)23 Anecdotes or collections of popular
memories (not exactly testimonies) are necessarily to be treated with even greater
caution, but they may themselves represent a historical fact, the sentiment of those
who accept and circulate anecdotes. By accepting and spreading narratives of
particular events, they suggest what actions they admired and what actions would
have repelled them.
One can therefore, surely listen to the anecdotal tales that the ordinary people
in the later half of nineteenth-century Bengal told about Vidyasagar among
themselves. Since the number of such stories is likely to exceed well over several
19
Even now the public in West Bengal respectfully marks the birthday of Vidyasagar (12 Ashwin/29
September) in their Bengali calendar.
20
L. Gossman, ‘Anecdote and History’, History and Theory 42(2) (2003), p. 155.
21
Ibid., p. 163.
22
C. Gallagher and S. Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism, Chicago, IL, 1977, p. 49.
23
A. Thomson, ‘Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History’, Oral History Review 34(I) (2007),
p. 54.

scores, one may keep the number under manageable limits referring only to those
which describe Vidyasagar with his trade-marks: a plain chādar (cotton shawl), a
coarse dhoti (loin-cloth) and a pair of chotis (leather slippers).24
II
From the very beginning of his working days Vidyasagar used to wear chadar,
dhoti and choti even on formal occasions and continued to do so throughout his
life. The dress—an amalgam of standard decency and severe personal economy,—
had some Brahmanical and lower middle-class air about it. Vidyasagar, being
conscious of his poverty-stricken boyhood and student days in Calcutta, did not
wish to show himself as an upstart even in his more prosperous days and stuck
obsessively throughout to chadar, dhoti and choti. This attire was chosen by him
by sheer habit, and probably for staying close to the common humanity. In all his
dealings and official businesses—whether in classrooms (as Sanskrit teacher in
Fort William College, 1841–49, and in Sanskrit College, 1850–58), or in Principal’s
offices (as Head Assistant, Fort William College, 1849 and Principal, Sanskrit
College, 1855–58), meeting halls and discussions with high government officials
(as Special Inspector of Schools, 1855–58)—Vidyasagar made his presence felt
invariably by putting on the characteristic plebeian choice of costume. He did not
find it necessary at all, according to Rabindranth Tagore, to change his usual dress
for being presented to one of the highest English dignitaries in Calcutta.25 In the
1850s the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Sir Frederick Halliday, often invited
Vidyasagar to his residence for consultation on educational matters. Vidyasagar
on his part insisted that he should be permitted to come to the Governor’s House
in Calcutta only in his normal dress, and not in European and Indian aristocratic
clothing. After this demand was met, he went to see the Lt. Governor whenever
summoned.26
Vidyasagar’s visiting the Lt. Governor in chadar, dhoti and choti in full view of
everybody naturally caused some flutter in those days among the public. The issue
of his dress again came to the fore in 1855: while working as the Assistant Secretary,
Sanskrit College, once Vidyasagar had to visit, on official work, the English Principal,
Presidency College, Calcutta. Allowed to enter his office, Vidyasagar found Principal
Car reclining on a chair with both his shoe-shod feet on the table and smoking a
pipe. He received Vidyasagar without changing his posture and spoke briefly before
dismissing the visitor. Sometime later, Principal Car had to come to the Sanskrit
College on some piece of work and met Vidyasagar. Vidyasagar received him similarly
24
Slightly covered in the front (toes-area), these cheap articles of footwear were made by cobblers
in Taltala, Calcutta, and came to be known as the Taltala or Vidyasgari chotis.
25
R. Thakur, Vidyasagar Charit, Calcutta, 1366 B.S., pp. 49–50, in Bengali.
26
H. Banerjee, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Bengali translation of his English monograph
New Delhi, 1971, pp.92–93.

in his office by reclining on the chair, stretching his choti-worn feet on the table, and
smoking from a hookah. Feeling insulted, Car promptly came out, and complained to
the higher authorities. When asked to explain by his superiors, Vidyasagar clarified
that he merely copied, and repeated the manner the ‘courteous’ English Principal had
received him earlier in the Presidency College.27
Having resigned from his well-secured and fairly high posting as Special
Inspector of Schools and Principal of Sanskrit College in 1858,28 Vidyasagar ran
into serious financial difficulties within a few years. The problem was essentially
a product of various expenses he incurred and the loans he contracted for making
his campaign over widow re-marriage. Barely 47 years old and academically
productive, Vidyasagar thought he could deal with his hardship by re-entering
public service. A rare opportunity came his way in 1866–67 when he was considered
for the post of Sanskrit Professor in Presidency College, and no less than the Lt.
Governor of the time, Sir Cecil Beadon, wanted him to be appointed. Vidyasagar,
however, did not eventually apply for the post solely because he would not accept
the offer if the salary the European Professor drew in that College was not given
to him. In his letter to Sir Cecil, Vidyasagar stated: ‘But I must say candidly that
notwithstanding the serious nature of the difficulties I am in, my vanity would not
permit me to serve it if the salary which the European Professor of the Institution
draws is not allowed to me.’ He also referred to a precedent for his claim: ‘the
grant of such an indulgence would not be an altogether unprecedented one’, and the
position of ‘the native Judge of the High Court can be pointed out as an instance.’29
Confronting discrimination of race once again a few years later, Vidyasagar was
prompt enough in dealing sternly with it—and this time in full view of the public.
While visiting the Indian Museum in Calcutta on 28 January 1874, in the company
of the Hindi poet Harish Chandra, Vidyasagar was stopped at the entrance by the
gatekeepers. Seeing him in his usual chadar, dhoti and choti, they pointed out to
Vidyasagar that the Indian footwear was not permitted by the authorities inside
the museum where only the western kind of shoes could be used. He was therefore
required to leave his chotis at the gate and go into galleries barefooted. Refusing
naturally to do this, Vidyasagar returned home without seeing the exhibits, and
27
Mitra, Karunasagar Vidyasagar; in Bengali, p. 128. Also see Sarkar, op. cit., p. 236.
28
Vidyasagar resigned from his position on 3 June 1858 on account of estrangement of relations
with the then Director of Public Instruction (W. Gordon Young) over (a) increasing fees of the Sanskrit
College students, which he strongly opposed, and (b) paying salaries to teachers of the girls’ schools
he set up in Nadia, Midnapore, Burdwan and Hooghly, which he used to pay for months from his own
pocket, and which the D.P.I. persistently opposed until the matter was resolved by the Lt Governor.
29
Mitra, op. cit., p. 330. Vidyasagar’s withdrawal from the race for Professorship in Presidency
College did not, however, keep him financially vulnerable for long. He vigorously pursued his project
of writing Bengali primers, textbooks, translating from Sanskrit classics, as well as from Shakespeare,
publishing and running printing presses. All these resulted in his attaining a fairly sound financial
position, and by the 1870s, he was reported to be earning about `3,500–`4,000 a month only from
publishing. See S. Basu, Samakale Vidyasagar; in Bengali, Calcutta, 1993, p. 179.

sent a strong letter to the museum authorities, protesting against their directive.
He wondered ‘if persons so wearing shoes of the English pattern…could be
admitted with shoes on…why persons of the same status, and under similar
circumstances, should not be admitted, simply because they happen to wear Indian
shoes’!30 The news of Vidyasagar’s protest over the Paduka-Bibhrat (shoe-troubles)
resulted in much criticism of the museum authorities in the press. The Hindu Patriot
observed that many of the learned persons in the country, who felt comfortable in
Indian footwear, would not be able, under such a restriction, to make use of the
museum’s rich collections. The Englishmen lamented over the fact that Indians
would not wish to visit the museum if a person of Vidyasagar’s eminence was
treated there so shabbily. The Sadharani wrote an incisively satirical piece on the
incident, thoroughly denouncing those in charge of running the museum.31
The Paduka-Bibhrat in the Indian Museum, and the overall government attitude
towards its scholarly Indian subjects, harsh at times and paternalistic at others,
seems to have got on the nerves of Vidyasagar and alienated him very considerably
from British Raj. That was perhaps the reason why he, who had no hesitation in
receiving in the past a Certificate of Honour from the government (on the occasion
of Lord Lytton’s Imperial Durbar) in 1877, decided in 1888, to go up the stairs
in the Governor’s House in chadar, dhoti and choti, and apologise for not being
able to accept the title of Honour (Mahamahopadhyaya) that the government was
bestowing upon him. The refusal caused quite a stir among the general public,
and some were reminded by this, including Somprakash, of Gladstone’s turning
down in England the title of honour being conferred on him by Queen Victoria.32
Vidyasagar’s abstention from receiving government patronage, was apparent
even a few years before his non-acceptance of the title of Mahamahopadhyaya.
In 1883 when the Government of India awarded C.I.E. (‘Companion of the Order
of India Empire’ instituted in 1877) to Vidyasagar, he failed to report to the
Governor’s House and receive the award in person in a ceremony. Some days
later, the Governor’s Office sent to him in his Badurbagan home the award and the
medallion through special messengers. Vidyasagar met the messengers and received
the medallion and the document from them. When they sought some tip (bakhshis)
for their services, he handed them over the medallion, instructed them to sell it off to
a nearby jeweller’s shop and divide the proceeds among themselves.33 Added to his
increasing alienation from the Raj was his dissatisfaction with his fellow subjects
owing to their lack of response over the issue of widow remarriage, polygamy and
child marriage. Consequently, Vidyasagar developed a high degree of distrust of
all those Bhadralok (gentlemen) who moved around him, as well as his critics.
30
B. Sarkar, Vidyasagar: Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar Jeevani, in Bengali, Calcutta, 1388 B.S., reprint,
Calcutta, 1986, pp. 322–27.
31
Ibid.
32
Basu, op. cit., p. 167.
33
Ibid., p. 166; Mitra, op. cit., p. 266.

‘It is astonishing for Mr. X to speak ill of me’ was his usual refrain, ‘I don’t think
I have ever done any good to him’.34
Vidyasagar at this point was also getting oblivious of his own standing in the
public, and hardly bothered if others were taking notice of him, or feeling his
presence in any way. While taking a stroll casually on the platform of Madhupur
railway station, the chadar, dhoti and choti-clad Vidyasagar stopped to observe
the arrival of a passenger train. Among the persons getting down, one well-bred
young man saw him standing and—taking him to be a coolie (porter)—asked him
to carry his luggage outside and put a medium-sized suitcase on Vidyasagar’s head.
Vidyasagar did not utter a single word in protest and accompanied the passenger out
of the station with the load on his head. Those who witnessed the scene could not
believe their eyes, and the young passenger fell on Vidyasagar’s feet to apologise
when he came to know of his mistake.35 The incident was talked about much in the
public, but Vidyasagar was reported to have maintained a stony silence. Perhaps he
saw no indignity in being mistaken for a coolie. He was reported to have exploded
on an earlier occasion, on a different matter. A rising of the peasants took place in
1859–60 against the oppressive European planter-Zamindars who forced indigo
cultivation upon them through coercion in several parts of Bengal.36 Playwright
Dinabandhu Mitra’s Neel Darpan, depicting the cruelties the peasants endured
at the hands of the English indigo-planters, proved a grand success when staged.
Vidyasagar, who knew Dinabandhu personally, came one day to the National
Theatre, where the play, Neel Darpan, was being staged in 1876, to witness the
performance, and he was given a seat in the first row in front of the stage. Deeply
impressed with the play as it was being acted, Vidyasagar gradually became so
engrossed in it—especially where the indigo-planter, Wood, was molesting a
hapless peasant woman—that he reportedly stood up in great anger and threw
one of his chotis on the stage, hitting the actor playing the molester.37 The actor
was the renowned Ardhendu Shekhar Mustafi, who then stopped acting for a few
minutes, picked up the choti and placed it upon his head. From the stage itself he
was believed to have declared the choti to be the highest award he had ever received
in his acting career.38
34
Bandyopadhyay, op. cit., p. 446; Sarkar, op. cit., p. 227.
35
This narrative was known to most young Bengalees, who learnt it (throughout the major part of
the twentieth century) in school textbooks to realise that a person should never be judged by his/her
outward appearance.
36
Coerced into unremunerative indigo-cultivation (by taking advances from the European planters
and handing them over the entire produce at fixed low prices), peasants began to defy the planters
from 1859 onward. The areas of revolt were Nadia, Jessore, Pabna, Rajshahi, Malda, Faridpur and
Murshidabad. Despite the government effort to suppress peasant agitation, the peasant unrest did not
abate, and eventually resulted in large scale agrarian disturbances (beginning with the one in Pabna and
spreading to some of the districts in the Eastern and the Western parts of Bengal) practically throughout
the 1870s and the early 1880s.
37
Mitra, op. cit., p. 594; Sarkar, ‘Vidyasagar and Brahmanical Society’, p. 236.
38
Ananda Bazar Patrika, Sunday Issue, 13 November 1960.

III
The Neel Darpan incident, which portrays a highly disciplined Vidyasagar

losing his self-control over a piece of fine acting, is, of course, hard to credit.
The early biographical works on Vidyasagar do not mention it nor does it figure
in the memoirs and observations of his contemporaries. In subsequent discussions
on Vidyasagar it has been treated as without much factual foundation (ratana,
ghatana noi).39 One could hardly, however, deny that the Neel Darpan episode has
perhaps been the widest in circulation among all the anecdotes about Vidyasagar,
and probably the most influential one in shaping an opinion of him with regard
to his sympathies for the oppressed poor. It might also have been favourable for
persuading most of the commoners to see, or imagine seeing Vidyasagar, their
favourite because of his assertion of self-respect in face of British authority and
of sympathy for the poor and the oppressed. Historically, many of the anecdotes
like this one are believed to have become current without evidence that could
pass muster in respect of reliability. Did Vidyasagar, on his part, hear at all the
‘voices’ and readied himself to respond somehow to these? Did he, by any chance
feel inside of him a certain impulse for pursuit of political radicalism, or social
upheaval? There seems to be no firm evidence of this, although he was aware
perhaps of the fact that the general public was fond of him, despite his breaches
with tradition. Otherwise, Vidyasagar could not have busied himself with work
that he thought to be most important. These included his own writings (those of
a ‘great European who was a Brahmin Pandit… who translated from Sanskrit, as
well as from Shakespeare’).40 There was the Metropolitan Institution converted into
a centre for graduate and post-graduate studies (where he favourably considered
young Ashutosh Mukherjee—famous later as Sir Ashutosh, ‘the Bengal Tiger’—
for a lectureship in 1886).41 There were, then the social crusade against Kulin
polygamy from 1871 and against child marriage from the early 1880s, and against
the consummation of marriage before the young wife’s first menses in 1891
(the year of his death).42 There were innumerable acts too of giving money to
the needy (for which he was known as much as for his learning) and notably
for rescuing the renowned Bengali poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, from his
financial predicament in France.43
39
Rabibasariya Alochana (Discussions in the Sunday Issue), Ibid.
40
B. Dey (an eminent poet) cited in B. A. Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and Cultural
Encounter in Bengal, Calcutta, 1996, p. 14.
41
Mitra, op. cit., p. 663.
42
Sarkar, op. cit., p. 270.
43
On his return, an effusively gratified Michael met Vidyasagar at the Spences Hotel in Calcutta,
embraced him to thank him profusely, and forced the chadar, dhoti and choti-clad Pandit to match his
fox-trot steps on the hotel dancing floor. Mitra, op. cit., pp. 421–22.

Ever active mentally, and intellectually, Vidyasagar died a natural death in

Calcutta on 29 July 1891—about two months before his seventy-first birthday—
and was cremated the following morning at the Nimtala Ghat. Quite a good number
of people must have attended his Brahmanical funeral—mostly Bhadralok for sure,
and some Chhotolok too most probably were also present, perhaps at a distance.

‘Hindi–Hindu’ discourse in late
colonial Punjab
K.L. Tuteja
One of the major spheres in which the communal divide in India especially in the north has
manifested itself is that of language, around the controversy over Hindi and Urdu. It raged in
colonial Punjab as well, despite the fact that neither language was spoken over the larger part
of it. In a sense, therefore, it was imported from the then North-Western Provinces (now UP),
where the original dialect had given rise to a common language (Khari Boli, Hindustani) with
two scripts, around which Hindi and Urdu came to be created as literary languages. Though
Urdu remained in colonial times the main print and school language in pre-1947 Punjab, the
language controversy continued to play a communally divisive role. In Punjab, the Arya Samaj
was the main torchbearer for Hindi, with even nationalists like Lala Lajpat Rai in its camp.
Keywords: Punjab, Hindi–Urdu controversy, Arya Samaj, Dayanand Sarasvati, Lala Lajpat Rai
This article aims to understand the nature and growth of the Hindi movement in
colonial Punjab. The Hindi movement in this province under the leadership of the
Arya Samaj and later the Punjab Hindu Sabha undoubtedly led to a weakening of
composite culture, which was one of the most pervasive characteristics of Punjab
society until the late nineteenth century. Composite culture as a term is simply used
here as implying ‘a set of practices that transcended community boundaries’.1 In
Punjab at the popular level, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs ‘were all alike as Punjabis
who shared common regional culture but could follow their respective religious
practices’.2 Moreover, until the late nineteenth century, the people, especially
those living in rural areas of Punjab, freely took part in multiple religious activities
irrespective of their own religious affiliation. A cursory glance at the social history
of Punjab of this period would show that a large number of ‘the Hindus regularly
undertook pilgrimage to what were apparently Muslim shrines; vast number of
Muslims conducted part of their life-cycle rituals as if they were Hindus, and,
equally, Sikhs attended Muslim shrines and Hindu sacred spots’.3 Indeed, a good
number of Hindus and Sikhs entertained deep reverence for Sufi saints because of
1
Kamal Jit Bhasin, In the Making: Identity Formation in South Asia, Gurgaon, 2007, p. 27.
2
See introduction by Kumkum Sangari, in Ibid., p. xii.
3
Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the
Sikh Tradition, Oxford, 1994, pp. 3–4.

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834776
34 / K.L. Tuteja
the mystic and spiritual appeal attributed to them. Those who frequently visited the
famous Sufi shrines associated with the names of Sultan Sakhi Sarwar and Baba
Farid included a large number of non-Muslims.4 Many Muslims along with Hindus
used to take part in a well-known fair, which was held near Rohtas on the day of
Shivratri every year, because of their faith in a local Hindu tradition popularly
known as Tilla Jogian.5 It was common for Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs to associate
themselves with local spirits that ‘included Goga Pir, whose primary prowess lay in
overpowering snakes and curing snake bites; and Sitla Devi, the “cool one,” who
was said to cure small pox’.6 Farina Mir in her essay on popular qis[s[as or stories
similarly underscores the presence of cultural coexistence and religious plurality in
Punjab.7 In simple words, social and cultural life of common people was governed
by a number of shared practices, and there appeared ‘much interpenetration and
overlapping of communal identities’.8 On the whole, religious and social boundar-
ies of different communities—Hindu, Muslim and Sikh—were not neatly defined
and demarcated; this obviously gave them a vague and blurred appearance till the
middle of the nineteenth century. Nor was any religious community clearly identified
with a particular language at this stage. The most popular language was Punjabi,
spoken by most people irrespective of their religious affiliations.9
In precolonial times, people who belong to different religious faiths did not,
therefore, constitute separate monolithic communities, with each having the
consciousness of a distinct trans-territorial identity. As a matter of fact, the word
‘community’ for a religion-based social collectivity came to be used for the first
time in the nineteenth century.10 At this stage, the sense of community depended
on a set of diverse factors, and although religion was an important aspect of social
life of the people, it seldom became an exclusive basis for the formation of any
distinct community existing at that time. It is indeed rightly stated that at that time,
4
See Richard Eaton, ‘Court of Men, Court of God: Local Perceptions of the Shrine of Baba Farid,
Pakpattan, Punjab’, in his Essays on Islam and Indian History, Oxford, 2000, pp. 240–41. Also see
Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri, ‘Facets of Medieval Punjab: Persian Literary Tradition and Composite Culture’,
Presidential Address (Medieval section), Punjab History Conference, 44th Session, Patiala, February 2012.
5
Ganesh Das, Chår Bågh-i-Panjåb, tr. and ed. J.S. Grewal and I. Banga, Early Nineteenth-Century
Panjab, Amritsar, 1975, p. 45.
6
Bhasin, op. cit., p. 29.
7
Farina Mir, ‘Genre and Devotion in Punjabi Popular Narratives: Rethinking Cultural and Religious
Syncretism’, in Punjab Reconsidered: History, Culture and Practice, eds. Anshu Malhotra and Farina
Mir, Delhi, 2012, pp. 221–60.
8
Oberoi, op. cit., p. 12.
9
For details see, G.A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IX, Part II; reprint, Delhi, 1968,
pp. 607–19; Tahir Kamran, ‘Punjab, Punjabi and Urdu, the Question of Displaced Identity: A Historical
Appraisal’, Journal of Punjab Studies, 14(1) (2007), pp. 11–25; Farina Mir, ‘Imperial Policy, Provincial
Practices: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth Century India’, The Indian Economic and Social
History Review, XLIII(4) (2006), pp. 395–428.
10
It is not without reason that ‘Indian languages do not possess a noun for religion as signifying a
single uniform and centralized community of believers’—Oberoi, op. cit., p. 12.

‘Hindi–Hindu’ discourse in late colonial Punjab / 35
among the common masses, ‘religion was a perceived and experienced reality,
but it did not generate trans-local consciousness’.11 This point is clearly evident
in Ganesh Das’s famous work Chår Bågh-i-Panjåb, written in Persian on the
history and society of precolonial Punjab. The author, uninfluenced by Western
historiography, did not divide social groups exclusively on the basis of religion; he
also considered professions, tribes and other factors equally important for social
classification.12 However, British officials and historians from the beginning held
the view that Indian society was basically divided into primordial and fixed religious
communities. Moreover, by the end of the nineteenth century, they also gradually
came to the conclusion that Hindus and Muslims as distinct communities had their
separate languages, namely Hindi and Urdu, respectively. In other words, the
idea of religion-based identities was further reinforced by tying up a particular
language with each religion. Along with this, the British held a perception, largely
shaped by their own intellectual tradition, that the life and rituals of the believers
of a particular religion were governed by their normative codes and beliefs and
not by existing social and ideological realities. As a result, whenever the British
came across instances of interpolation in a religious tradition or its followers not
strictly adhering to set of rules and rituals, they took such cases as mere instances
of deviation.13
However, it is also true that with the passage of time, British understanding of
Indian social reality that entailed division of society into monolithic and homoge-
neous religious communities was also appropriated, albeit selectively, by different
sections of Indians. In Punjab, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the new
educated middle class belonging to all the three communities—Hindu, Muslim
and Sikh—on the basis of the form of knowledge provided by the British began
to redefine their own social entity by their religion. In each case, their endeavour
was to develop a strong communitarian consciousness by making extensive use
of printed literature, which, of course, required a choice of language in which the
communitarian leaderships of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, as part of their effort at
consolidating their respective religious identities, began to identify themselves, each
with a separate language—Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi (in Gurmukhi), respectively.
In this manner, language and religion together became the chief markers of socio-
religious identities, which began to reflect themselves in both cultural and political
domains. This intertwining of language/script and religion became more pronounced
from the 1901 census when the official enumerators identified religious–linguistic
identities in more exclusive terms such as ‘Urdu with Persian/Muslim/Islam and
11
K.N. Panikkar, ‘Secular Thoughts’, Frontline, January 27, 2012. https://frontline.thehindu.com/
static/html/fl2901/stories/20120127290108700.htm
12
Cf. Grewal and Banga, in introduction as editors to their trans., Early Nineteenth-Century Punjab,
op. cit., p. 26.
13
Bhasin, op. cit., pp. 41–74, deals with the assumptions behind official enumeration by religion in
late nineteenth-century Punjab.

36 / K.L. Tuteja
Hindi with Nagari/ Hindu/Hinduism’.14 However, it would be misleading to say that

the people at large belonging to different religions accepted this linguistic divide
in their daily life. The Tribune in an editorial in 1911 commented,
The idea is utterly misleading that in any part of India Hindus and Mohammedans
cultivate different languages on account of their religions. Language is a matter of
locality (or region) and not of religion…. For all practical purposes, Hindus and
Mohammedans have the same language, whatever that language might be….15
The whole effort of sections of Hindu and Muslim elite is to strive to alter this
situation on the ground by making Hindi and Urdu the literary languages of their
respective communities.
II
It is already well established that originally Hindi and Urdu were not two separate
languages. Nor was there any kind of religious identification that would make
Hindi and Urdu as languages associated respectively with Hinduism and Islam.
For a long time, it remained true that ‘one man’s Hindi is another man’s Urdu, and
vice versa’.16 Both Hindi and Urdu had a shared past or a common history for a
long time, and it is rightly stated that ‘merely substituting the word Hindi for Urdu
can easily convert an Urdu story into a Hindi story’.17 Their common heritage is
traced in the so-called ‘Khari Boli’ (pure speech), which was in use as a popular
form of speech in the region around Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh (UP) since
the beginning of the thirteenth century. At different times and by different people,
this widely spoken language was described as Hindwi/Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani.
This language was a product of cultural mixing of local societies; and the common
masses, both Hindus and Muslims, used it at the popular level. In the beginning,
it was not a standardised language, and its vocabulary was drawn from a number
of sources that included indigenous words from Sanskrit and Prakrit and local
dialects as well as those of Persian/Arabic origin. Besides, it was written in Kaithi/
Nagari and the Arabic script, which gave it a special character of ‘one language
and two scripts’.18
Since what was later called Khari Boli, being the common medium of speech,
was different from Persian, the language of the court, it and other popular dialects
14
Cf. Asha Sarangi, ‘Enumeration and Linguistic Identity Formation in Colonial North India’, Studies
in History, 25(2) (2009), pp. 197–227.
15
The Tribune, 20 January 1911.
16
Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism, New Delhi, 2000, p. 11.
17
Salil Misra, ‘Transition from the Syncretic to the Plural: The World of Hindi and Urdu’, in
Religious Pluralism in South Asia and Europe, eds. Jamal Malik and Helmut Reifeld, Oxford, 2005,
p. 269.
18
A subject examined extensively in Christopher King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi
Movement in Nineteenth Century North India, New Delhi, 1994.

were designated Hindi/Hindwi, Bhakha or Bhasha. Khari Boli also came to be

earlier known as Rekhta (which in Persian meant ‘thrown, mixed’). Towards the
late eighteenth century, another term ‘Urdu’ (from Urdø-i Mu‘allå, language of the
royal court at Delhi) also came into use for this language. This new name in time
came to be identified with the language written in the Arabic script.19 However,
till the beginning of the eighteenth century, the difference between Hindi and
Urdu except for their respective scripts was almost non-existent. The British from
the very beginning of their contact with north Indian society found this language
to be quite different from the official language of the court (usually Persian in
Northern India, including Punjab) and gave it a ‘variety of labels’ from time to
time. However, by the end of the eighteenth century, the most common term used
by the British officials for Khari Boli was Hindustani, which denoted ‘a language
spoken by the people, Hindu and Muslim, who inhabited Hindustan’.20 Moreover,
they came to the conclusion that the Hindustani or the composite language of the
people of Hindustan was of two variants, namely (a) Hindi written in Nagari script
for the Hindus and (b) Urdu written in Arabic script for the Muslims. Later in the
late nineteenth century, this colloquial language got gradually split into two distinct
literary languages, Hindi and Urdu, each having a separate script, and then identi-
fied respectively with Hindus and Muslims as their respective users. The colonial
hand in affecting this linguistic divide is emphasised in some nationalist writings.
However, Alok Rai, while taking note of the ‘dread hand of the British’, found it
‘crucially insufficient’ for an accurate explanation of the Hindi–Urdu split and its
impact on the Hindu–Muslim relations.21 Vasudha Dalmða attempts to examine the
British government’s attitude towards language question keeping in backdrop the
‘European concept of nation and national language’.22 She adds that the British
‘increasingly came to view the Hindus and Muslims as two races, as two nations
possessing their own respective histories, cultures and also their own languages’.
As a result, they ‘initiated a process which in the case of Hindustani, quickly led
to a split and to the creation of Hindi and Urdu as the two national languages of
Hindus and Muslims respectively, and to their subsequent development as two
autonomous print languages’.23
The story of this linguistic divide began with John Gilchrist who was appointed
Professor of Hindustani at Fort William College, established at Calcutta in 1800 for
the benefit of newly appointed civilians in the service of the East India Company.
Under his leadership, in the initial stages, Hindustani as an indigenous language
19
This development is dealt with in Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Early Urdu Literary Culture and
History, New Delhi, 2001.
20
Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Command of Language and the Language of Command’, in Subaltern Stud-
ies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha, Delhi, 1985, Vol. IV, pp. 276–329.
21
Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism, New Delhi, 2001, p. 20.
22
Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, New Delhi, 1997, p. 150.
23
Ibid., p. 146.

38 / K.L. Tuteja
was taught in the Perso–Arabic script. But then Gilchrist thought of making some
arrangements for Hindavi or Bhakha keeping in mind the Hindu cultural heritage
and tradition. Accordingly, the newly appointed Bhakha Munshi, Laluji Lal,
produced the first major work, Prem Sågar, written in Nagari, which along with
some works of similar genre are held to mark the beginning of Hindi prose.
Underlining the significance of the change brought in Prem Sågar, Dalmia rightly
comments:
The novel feature (of this work) was that the avoidance of Perso-Arabic vocabu-
lary was made a matter of deliberate policy in order to restrict the cultural orbit
of Hindavi to the Hindus alone. This was a pragmatic rather than a political
measure, aimed at making communication with Hindus more effective.24
The perception that underlines the relationship between the Hindi and Hindus got
further impetus when in the early phase of the nineteenth century, the missionar-
ies based at Serampore began to publish evangelical literature including tracts in
Hindavi or Hindi in Nagari script with a view to propagating Christianity among
Hindus. Apart from this, Tract and School Book Societies also published a large
number of textbooks of elementary nature in Nagari for the use of Hindu students
studying at a number of schools in Bihar, Banaras and neighbouring areas. It was
in this manner that Hindi gradually started developing as the ‘lingua franca’ of
the Hindus.25
But all this did not mean that the new ‘Hindi’ was widely accepted by ordi-
nary Hindus. Here, it is important to take note of the fact that at this stage, there
were three main variants of vernacular languages in northern India. Greirson thus
describes the linguistic situation in his own time: ‘Hindustani is the language of
Upper Gangetic Doab, and is also the lingua franca of India capable of being written
in both Persian and Devanagari characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the
excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature’.26
This means that the sharp division on the basis of Hindi and Urdu was absent,
and the linguistic situation appeared fluid and fuzzy for a long time. However,
the emergence of modern Hindu and Muslim elites whose ranks included some
intellectuals and literary persons in North-Western Provinces (NWP) (present-day
UP) gradually tended to undermine the relevance of composite spoken Hindustani,
making it lose space to Sanskritised Hindi and Persianised Urdu.
It appears quite evident that the British government on its part did not evolve a
well-thought-out linguistic policy.27 Nor did it have ‘any vested interest in either
24
Ibid., p. 167.
25
G.A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IX, Part II; reprint, Delhi, 1968, pp. 42–56.
26
Ibid., p. 47.
27
See King, op. cit., chapter on ‘Government Language Policy’, pp. 53–87, for details.

developing any regional languages as medium of public communication or for

that matter in propagating any single language as the lingua franca of British India’.28
At higher levels of administration, it was English which alone was permitted, at least
since 1834 (in the Bengal Presidency). However, at the lower level, namely local
administration and courts, it was felt appropriate to adopt a vernacular which was
largely understood by the local people of a particular region.29 In the case of NWP,
Hindustani in the Perso–Arabic script (or Urdu) was made the official vernacular
language. This had one consequence: Hindus too turned to Urdu in larger numbers.
One of the supporters of Hindi, working in the education department, went to the
extent of saying that it appeared as if Urdu had almost become the lingua franca
of this province.30 As a consequence, as Francis Robinson tells us, Urdu in Arabic
script became a symbol of power and influence for the Muslims, while the Hindus,
on the other hand, ‘were not slow to equate the fate of Hindi language with that
of Hindu nationality’.31 In other words, the fight for Hindi in Nagari script got
inextricably linked to the idea of a broad Hindu identity which was fast gaining
ground in north India in the late nineteenth century.
It may be mentioned here that the Hindu elite based at Banaras and Allahabad
which soon became leading centres of the Hindi movement in the country began to
consolidate the position of Hindi as linguistic and literary tradition within a broad
Hinduised perspective.32 Leading Hindi intellectuals like Bharatendu Harishchandra
aggressively pursued their agenda in the public sphere through print culture. This is
also evident from the sharp rise in Hindi publications which included literary and
general books, newspapers, periodicals, and so on in the late nineteenth century.
Besides, these Hindu intellectuals made extra effort to distance Hindi from Urdu
by contesting the fact of common heritage of the two languages. With this object in
mind, their endeavour was to replace in Hindi all words of Perso–Arabic origin by
those from Sanskrit. They also carried on a campaign against Urdu by describing it
as a ‘foreign language’ which along with the ‘Muslims came from outside’. Above
all, their attempt was to establish the historicity of Hindi by tracing its roots to
Sanskrit and thereby underscored its association with ancient Aryan culture. Hindi
agitation began in right earnest under the leadership of the Nagari Pracharni Sabha,
which was formed in Banaras in 1893 with a view to securing for Nagari the status
of official script in the NWP. The growing divide between Hindi and Urdu eventu-
ally turned into a cause of Hindu–Muslim tension in the late nineteenth century
first in UP, and later especially in Punjab.
28
Dalmia, op. cit., p. 147.
29
Cf. Rai, op. cit., pp. 17–18.
30
Statement of Shiv Prasad, in Dalmia, 2000, p. 185.
31
Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of United Provinces Muslims,
1869–1923, Oxford, 1968, p. 71.
32
For this see the discussion in Dalmia, 2000, pp. 191–221.

40 / K.L. Tuteja
III
As Ayesha Jalal points out, until the early 1860s, none of the religious communities
claimed the ‘sole proprietorship’ over any of the languages that were in use for
worldly affairs in Punjab.33 In pre-British times, the court language of Ranjit Singh
and his successors like their predecessors, the Mughals, was Persian. However, the
Sikh rulers always gave Punjabi in Gurmukhi script a sanctified position because of
its association with Sikh scriptures. The linguistic situation in Punjab at the time of
its annexation by the British in 1849, therefore, appeared somewhat complex. It is
well known that a large number of people irrespective of their religious affiliation
living in Central Punjab and the adjoining areas of West Punjab communicated in
the popular language known as Punjabi. But, as Grierson writes, ‘Punjabi is not the
only language spoken in that province’.34 It is believed that Punjabi was linked to a
form of western Hindi and was written in different scripts, namely Nagari, Arabic
and Gurmukhi. Moreover, it was divided into a number of dialects spoken in dif-
ferent parts of the province. It is significant that when at a later stage under colonial
rule, each religious community got identified with a separate language and script,
the common people irrespective of their religious faith always interacted in their
colloquial language, Punjabi. However, the British government, after taking over
Punjab, found in Punjabi a difficult vernacular which was not yet a standardised
language; its large number of phrases and terms were ‘untranslatable’ and had a great
deal of ‘ambiguity’ in them.35 In this situation, the local British officials in Punjab
preferred to introduce Urdu as the vernacular language for ensuring administrative
convenience. John Lawrence, one of the members of the Board of Administration
in Punjab, clearly believed that Urdu being the lingua franca of India could easily
be used in all parts of Punjab.36 A number of lower officials belonging to Kayastha
and Khatri castes who came along with the British to Punjab from the NWP (UP)
were also in favour of making Urdu the official vernacular in Punjab primarily
because they were already well equipped in it. The British bureaucracy in Punjab
was convinced that the Muslims who formed the majority in the province would
easily adopt Urdu since its words were nearer to those of the vernacular Punjabi
used by them. It is of course true that although not much in use in the initial stages
of British rule, Urdu began to be learnt by many after it was recognised as an
official vernacular in Punjab.37 The government now made the knowledge of Urdu
mandatory for all lower jobs up to `20 per month. It is often believed that this
33
Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850,
Lahore, 2001, p. 102.
34
G.A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IX, Part II; reprint, Delhi, 1968, p. 607.
35
Kamran, op. cit., pp. 11–25.
36
Ibid.
37
G.W. Leitner, History of Indigenous Education: Since Annexation and in 1882; reprint, Patiala,
1971, pp. 46–47.

decision of the government placed Muslims at an advantageous position and so

created panic among middle- and lower middle-class Hindus. However, the truth
was that compared to the Muslims, a larger number of Hindus and Sikhs took to
Urdu education with a view to entering government service.38 Simultaneously, the
fact remained that in the wake of the Hindi–Urdu controversy, Urdu was tending
to become a cultural symbol of upper- and middle-class Muslims in northern India.
Under these conditions, the Muslim elite’s attempt was to popularise Urdu through
print media by bringing out newspapers like Paisa Akhbar and Zamindar in the late
nineteenth century.39 At the same time, a separate body called Anjuman-i Himayat-i
Urdu was formed for promoting the cause of Urdu.40
It is interesting to note that in Punjab, which in time became a major centre of
Hindi agitation, Hindi in Nagari script was almost non-existent in the late nine-
teenth century.41 Unlike the NWP (UP), Hindi/Nagari as a literary tradition as well
as Hindi education did not really develop in Punjab until the early decades of the
twentieth century. Yet, the Hindu educated elite (including some eminent persons
like Lajpat Rai, who were not at all much conversant with Hindi) found in Hindi
a highly crucial cultural resource for invoking Hindu cultural identity at the trans-
territorial level. Leitner rightly observed that although Hindi did not exist in Punjab,
the educated Hindus ‘clamoured’ for this language for the sake of ‘unification of
Hindus throughout India’.42
In Punjab, the movement in favour of Hindi thus became part of a larger Hindu
discourse initiated in North India that in itself was related to a new vision of Hindu-
ism. It is well established by now that prior to the turn of the nineteenth century,
the conception of Hinduism as a distinctive, homogeneous and authoritatively
codified religion did not exist in India. It can, indeed, be argued that it was the
‘Europeans … [who] created Hinduism in their own image’.43 Early Orientalists
might, therefore, well have played an important role in constructing Hinduism as
a coherent religion, comprising a vast body of shared beliefs, myths, rituals and
laws. The new educated middle classes that emerged under the colonial system
appear to have appropriated this homogeneous version of Hinduism as projected
by the Orientalists and also filled it with a new or additional content to suit their
own specific beliefs and values.
The Brahmo Samaj can be cited as a pioneer reform movement, which attempted
to reinterpret Hinduism through a return to Upanishadic thought. It is, of course,
true that this movement was apparently syncretic and universalist in its approach,
38
Ibid.
39
Kamran, pp. 11–25.
40
Ian Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, 1849–1947, Delhi, 1988, p. 68.
41
Leitner, op. cit., p. 29.
42
Ibid., p. 48.
43
P.J. Marshal, ed. The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1970,
p. 43.

42 / K.L. Tuteja
yet it essentially remained a ‘Hindu theistic association’.44 Although its influence

in Punjab was limited, it made a significant contribution in the emergence of a
sense of Hindu identity. It is true that the main following of the Brahmo Samaj in
Punjab was limited primarily to members of the Bengali educated elite who came
to this region along with the British and took up either government jobs or engaged
in professions like teaching and journalism. But while using Bengali at home,
they yet supported the cause of Hindi vis-à-vis Urdu. Babu Navin Chundra Roy,
a well-known Adi Brahmo leader, who lived in Punjab, became one of the chief
proponents of the Hindi movement. Keshub Chandra Sen, the famous Brahmo leader
and reformer of Bengal, is said to have asked the founder of Arya Samaj Swami
Dayanand to adopt Hindi in place of Sanskrit as the language for communicating
his ideas to the common people or while participating in debates and discussions.45
The most notable attempt to reform and recast Hinduism in Punjab was indeed
made by Swami Dayanand who founded the Arya Samaj in 1875. One of the impor-
tant features of the Arya Samaj movement was the assertion of the indigenousness
of Hinduism and its superiority over the faith of the foreign rulers. The exercise
of reconstructing a Hindu identity around a definite doctrinal faith was carried out
by Swami Dayanand ostensibly in the name of recovering the essentials of the
Vedic message by removing the contamination it had received in the later periods.
The revivalism that the Arya Samaj preached played a role not only in presenting
Hinduism as a fixed faith but also in seeking to heighten a sense of pride among
the Hindus in their own identity. In Dayanand’s philosophy, the Vedas constitut-
ing the scripture of Hinduism were ‘divine in origin’ and were composed in
Sanskrit, the ‘mother of all languages’. The Swami gave special attention to the
study of Sanskrit, which was described as the ‘language of Gods’ and also as the
original language of the Aryas or Hindus.46 However, as mentioned earlier, Day-
anand was persuaded to adopt Hindi in place of Sanskrit as the language for religious
discourse and discussions amidst the wider public. Perhaps keeping this in mind,
he translated his magnum opus Satyårth Parkåsh (originally written in Sanskrit)
into Hindi. To him, Hindi was an offshoot of Sanskrit and had to be treated as the
language of Hindus. This is quite evident from the fact that in the constitution of
the Arya Samaj which was framed for the first time in 1875, Hindi was placed at
a higher pedestal by describing it as the ‘Arya Bhasha’, underlining its historical
roots in Sanskrit.47 By so doing, he conveniently sidelined the cultural heritage
that Hindi shared with Urdu. At the same time, the Arya Samaj movement was
44
K.N. Panikkar, Culture, Ideology, and Hegemony, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 1–33.
45
King, op. cit., p. 141.
46
See Sumathi Ramaswamy, ‘Sanskrit for the Nation’, Modern Asian Studies, 33(2) (1999),
p. 347. See also Kenneth Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th Century, Berkeley, 1976,
pp. 69–70, passim.
47
Lajpat Rai, A History of the Arya Samaj; reprint, Delhi, 1992, p. 40.

responsible in shaping the ‘Hindi–Hindu discourse’ that was now to have a very
significant long-term impact on Hindu–Muslim relations in Punjab.
In the late nineteenth century, the Hindi movement, led to a heated Hindi–Urdu
controversy, which originally began in the NWP (UP) and then was extended to
Punjab. It is true that by its very nature the Hindi–Urdu divide in Punjab, affect-
ing only the literate classes, appeared more a product of the conflict of Hindu and
Muslim elite groups who were trying to assert their respective positions in the
administrative and political structure set up under colonial rule. The majority of
those who took part in the Hindi movement in Punjab came from middle- and lower
middle-class Hindus, from whom increasing support came also for the Arya Samaj
movement. Richard Fox in an article has convincingly argued that the reconstructed
Hindu ideology of the Arya Samaj and the material interests of the lower middle
classes ‘coalesced’ in Punjab.48 It is believed that some sections of Hindu middle
classes who were feeling culturally alienated and humiliated under British rule were
attracted to the ideology and programme of the Arya Samaj which not only presented
a glorified vision of their ancient past but also inspired them to take active interest
in mundane affairs of their everyday life.49 It is pertinent to mention here that the
Hindus who were in a minority with 35 per cent population in Punjab had already
established their ascendancy in education, professions, trade and industry in the
province. In particular, they formed more than 89 per cent of the literates in Punjab.
As against Hindus, the Muslims who constituted the majority, comprising 54 per
cent of the population, lived primarily in the rural areas of northwest Punjab, and
so among them, the growth of education was comparatively much slower. On the
other hand, educated Muslims, inspired by their counterparts in Aligarh in the late
nineteenth century, began to promote education in their own community. Moreover,
as mentioned earlier, they had also constituted a body called Anjuman Himayat-i-
Urdu for protecting the cause of Urdu. This helped to consolidate and strengthen
Muslim consciousness as a distinct community around the issue of Urdu.50
The agitation in favour of Hindi in Punjab became more intense when in 1881,
the Hunter Commission was appointed to recommend the language to be used for
public services and secondary education. Some Hindi partisans even believed that
the ‘Commission had the power to recommend changes in the language policy of
the government’.51 The Arya Samaj and some other Hindu organisations pleaded
before the Commission that Hindi in Nagari script should be adopted in place of
48
Richard Fox, ‘Urban Class and Communal Consciousness in Colonial Punjab: The Genesis of
India’s Intermediate Regime’, Modern Asian Studies, 18(3) (1984), pp. 459–89.
49
See K.L. Tuteja and O.P. Grewal, ‘Emergence of Hindu Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth
Century Punjab,’ Social Scientist, 20(7–8) (1992), pp. 3–28.
50
Cf. Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharma: Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth Century Punjab, New
Delhi, 1976, pp. 316–7; N.G. Barrier, ‘The Arya Samaj and Congress Politics in Punjab, 1894–1908’,
Journal of Asian Studies, 1(26) (1966–1967), pp. 365–77.
51
Rai, op. cit., p. 41.

44 / K.L. Tuteja
Urdu as the main vernacular language for school education in Punjab. The Commis-
sion received a large number of memorials concerning the language issue, more of
these being in ‘favour of Hindi than of Urdu’.52 The Anjuman-i Islamia, a Muslim
organisation from Amritsar, requested the Commission that Urdu being the official
vernacular of lower courts in Punjab be retained as the medium of instruction in
schools. It argued that ‘Urdu though a foreign tongue, is understood in almost all
the parts of the province, and is spoken generally. It is rapidly developing into a
language and the schools are no less useful or less popular for using it as medium
of instruction’.53 The Arya Samaj, in its representation, on the other hand, urged
that Urdu being ‘foreign to the soil’ was not the real vernacular of Punjab and was
‘spoken neither by Mohammadans nor by the Hindus’.54 The Arya Samaj claimed:
‘The vernacular of the people is Hindi beyond the Satluj (towards Delhi side) and
a dialect of Hindi (i.e., Panjabi) on the Punjab side of the river….’55 It proclaimed
for Hindi the status of ‘a sacred language on account of its association with the
Devanagari characters, the characters of Sanskrit, which is regarded as the language
of the gods’.56 However, the Arya Samaj leadership was conscious of the fact that
till the time Urdu remained the court language in Punjab, it would not be possible
for the Hunter Commission to replace it as the medium of instruction in schools.
Therefore, they suggested that Urdu should be made optional, and ‘it should give
its place to Hindi, at least for the Hindus’.57 Lajpat Rai, in his autobiography,
wrote that as a student of Government College, Lahore, he plunged into the Hindi
agitation along with his well-known Arya Samajist friends, Guru Datta and Lala
Hans Raj. Lajpat Rai and Guru Datta got a memorial signed in favour of Hindi
from thousands of students. Later, he also delivered a speech at Ambala for which
he was later reprimanded by the Principal of the College. However, the Hunter
Commission avoided making any specific recommendation on the issue of language,
so that Urdu continued as medium of instruction in the schools.
The ghettoisation of Hindi and Urdu as sources of exclusive and separate
linguistic identities, which appeared so visible in UP, was thus actually blurred in
late nineteenth-century Punjab. The Hindu middle classes were conscious of the
fact that under the existing conditions, Urdu had greater relevance for them in their
everyday life. This was clearly noticed by the Hunter Commission which reported:
‘The Hindus and Sikhs attended these schools (where elementary education was
imparted in Urdu) in larger proportion than the Mohamadans although the medium of
instruction seems to favour them.’58 Even DAV institutions which were ideologically
52
Education Commission: Report by the Panjab Provincial Committee, Calcutta, 1884, p. 106.
53
Ibid., p. 147.
54
Ibid., p. 471.
55
Ibid.
56
Ibid., p. 481.
57
Ibid., p. 467.
58
Ibid.

committed to Hindi continued with the teaching of Urdu as part of their curri-
culum. One simple reason, of course, was that the knowledge of Urdu was made
essential by the provincial government for getting jobs in the administration.59 The
Arya Samaj in its statement before the Hunter Commission too had accepted that
a number of Hindu students were opting for Urdu with prospects of employment
in mind.60 Lajpat Rai himself wrote in Urdu the biographies of Swami Dayanand
and Shri Krishna, justifying his choice of language in the preface of his book on
Shri Krishna in the following words: ‘It was the Arya Samaj which realised the
need for bringing out Hindu religious books in the Urdu language written in the
Persian script for the benefit of the educated classes of the Punjab and the United
Provinces.’61 Moreover, Lajpat Rai went on to place Urdu language outside the
ambit of religious affiliation. He wrote: ‘In fact, Urdu is the name of the language
spoken by Indians and sometimes the words Urdu and Hindustani (or Hindi) are
used in the same sense.’62 He felt that under the Muslim rulers in medieval times,
there was ‘preponderance of Arabic and Persian words in the language of educated
Indians’. Lajpat Rai described this as ‘Muslim Urdu’. But now Urdu was under-
going change since a large number of words from other sources were gradually
added to its vocabulary. So while writing Hindu religious books in Urdu, there was
yet a strong need to replace Arabic and Persian words with Sanskrit words which,
in his view, was imperative for keeping intact the religious spirit of Hinduism.63
Throughout his life, Lajpat Rai kept writing in Urdu on a number of political, social
and religious subjects, though he used a mixed form of Urdu, liberally sprinkling
it with words from Hindi and other local dialects.
IV
The Hindi agitation in the NWP (now UP) underwent a highly significant shift in
1900 when its Lt. Governor, Sir Anthony MacDonnell, permitted the use of Hindi in
Nagari script as alternative to Urdu in the courts and by implication more generally
in the administration.64 This was seen as a major victory by the partisans of Hindi.
The number of Hindi periodical publications in UP began greatly to increase, while
there was also a sharp rise in the number of students opting for Hindi education
in the province. A number of Hindu leaders and scholars, including Bhartendu
59
Probably keeping this in mind, a number of Hindu students and their parents pressed upon the DAV
Managing Committee to ensure that teaching of Urdu in DAV institutions should not be discouraged
in any manner. The Committee agreed to their suggestion, but decided to limit seats of Urdu class in
the DAV school to 50 only. I owe this piece of information to Professor S.K. Gupta (Patiala), who has
been working on the Arya Samaj and the DAV movement.
60
Education Commission, p. 366.
61
B.R. Nanda, ed., Collected Works of Lala Lajpat Rai, New Delhi, 2003, Vol. 1, p. 422.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid., pp. 422–23.
64
King, op. cit., pp. 154–56; Rai, p. 18.

46 / K.L. Tuteja
Harishchandra, became more active in carrying on a campaign for greater use of

Hindi. They claimed that Hindi alone had ‘the qualifications required of a national
language: ancient history, congruence with Hindu territory, and cultivated
literature’.65
In Punjab, however, the Hindi movement developed in a much subdued manner
at the turn of the twentieth century. Urdu, as stated earlier, continued here as the
official vernacular language of the courts and local administration and as a medium
of instruction in government schools. In fact, Hindi education, despite some serious
efforts made by the Arya Samajists, was not able to make any notable advance in
the province.66 Publications in Hindi lagged much behind as compared to Urdu
publications in this region.67 Indeed, unlike UP, Hindi was never accepted even as
a colloquial language at the popular level in Punjab nor was it used for a common
interaction in bazaars. The Hindus in Punjab in their daily life, like other sections
of society, interacted largely in Punjabi. At the same time, they were prone to use
Urdu in their educational and professional pursuits. However, for purely ideologi-
cal reasons, the language question in Punjab became one of the major causes of
Hindu–Muslim tension which escalated especially in the urban areas.68
The urban Hindus in Punjab with their heightened community consciousness
formed a Punjab Hindu Sabha in December 1906. Later in 1909, a Provincial Hindu
Conference, held under the auspices of the Punjab Hindu Sabha, took up the cause
of Hindi along with other issues. There were two distinct strands visible among
the Hindu elite associated with the Punjab Hindu Sabha. The first represented by
Rai Bahadur Lal Chand had a more openly communal perspective. He was one of
the pioneers of the Arya Samaj movement and held the position of President of the
DAV Managing Committee for 20 years. He played a leading role in organising
the first Hindu conference in the province. In 1909, Lal Chand wrote a number
of letters to the press which he later published as a book.69 His main contention
was that the Muslims, with the support of the British government, were able to
strengthen themselves in local society and politics vis-à-vis the Hindus who,
according to him, were also being betrayed by the Congress. In this situation, Lal
Chand’s appeal to the Hindus was to take a more aggressive position in order to
safeguard their own interests as a community and treat Muslims as their primary
65
Dalmia, 1997, p. 195.
66
King, p. 77, notes that in Punjab, ‘Hindi and Nagari remained in a very subordinate position.
So complete was the dominance of Urdu, that Hindi was not even medium of instruction in primary
schools for boys’. Also see, P. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, Cambridge,
1994, pp. 287–88.
67
For example, in 1900 the number of Hindi newspapers was 17, whereas the number of Urdu news-
papers was 343 (figures derived from N.G. Barrier and Paul Wallace, The Punjab Press, 1880–1905,
Michigan, 1970, passim).
68
The rise of communal tension between Hindus and Muslims in Punjab has been discussed in detail
in Tuteja and Grewal, 1992, op. cit., pp. 3–28.
69
The book being R.B. Lal Chand, Self Abnegation in Politics, Lahore, 1938.

opponent. Moreover, he believed that the favour done to Urdu by the Government
had ‘given it a tremendous pull over its rivals, Hindi and Punjabee’.70 At the same
time, Lal Chand was critical of the Hindus as they had ‘failed to assert themselves
and allowed their own interests to be overborne by a spirit of laissez-faire’.71
He expressed much concern over the increasing acceptance of Urdu by Punjabi
Hindus since this was bound to weaken their Hindu cultural heritage: Hindus needed
Sanskrit and Hindi for their ‘self-respect and self-preservation’. In his message to
them, he stated, ‘[L]et it be remembered that language, next to religion, is one of
the chief distinguishing features of a community.’72 It is, however, interesting to
note that Lal Chand did not ask that Hindi to be made the local official language
in place of Urdu. He indeed realised that it was Punjabee (which was considered
as one of the forms of Hindi), and not Hindi proper, which was the language of
‘home and hearth’ without any distinction of creed.73 Therefore, he demanded that
the Punjabee being the ‘mother tongue’ should be given the position of official
language in place of Urdu which he branded as a ‘foreign language’.74
The other strand within the Hindu elite in Punjab that had bearing on the
language question was represented by Lajpat Rai. As noted earlier, Lajpat Rai at
a young age was influenced by the ideology of a distinct Hindu identity and took
pride in associating himself with the Hindi movement in the closing decades of the
nineteenth century in Punjab. He had also developed a strong sense of nationalism
and had formally joined the Indian National Congress as early as 1888. Lajpat Rai’s
nationalist ideas were, however, to some extent, shaped by the philosophy of Arya
Samaj that laid emphasis on Hindu self-reliance. Yet, at the same time, he firmly
believed that nationalism was essentially a modern phenomenon which derived
its strength from the ideals of liberty, progress and freedom.75 His active involve-
ment in the anti-imperialist struggle is well known and does not therefore require
discussion here. Lajpat Rai visualised an inclusive Indian nation as he observed at
the first Hindu conference held in Lahore in 1909: ‘I believe that political salvation
of India must come out of a combination and unity of all communities into one
national whole.’76 Later in 1920, on the eve of the Non-Cooperation Movement,
he declared: ‘We, of the Indian National Congress, have always believed that the
fabric of Indian liberties cannot be built safe and secure except upon the foundation
70
Lal Chand, op. cit., p. 40.
71
Ibid., p. 41.
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid., p. 43.
74
Ibid.
75
Lajpat Rai, Young India, Lahore, 1927, p. 184. Lajpat Rai, like a number of Indian leaders, primarily
viewed Indian nationalism as a product of the contradiction that existed between British colonialism and
the interest of all Indians irrespective of their differentiations on the basis of caste, creed and language.
76
Lajpat Rai’s speech at the first Hindu conference held at Lahore in 1909 (B.R. Nanda, ed.,
Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 167).

48 / K.L. Tuteja
of a close understanding between the two communities’.77 His firm opinion at this
juncture was that although the Muslims came to India from outside, over the years
they became fully integrated with Indian society. They ‘adopted the country, made
it their home, married and raised children there, and became the sons of the soil’.78
The spirit of this perspective was best reflected when Lajpat Rai, unlike R.B. Lal
Chand and a number of Arya Samajists, described Urdu as ‘as much Indian as any
other language spoken in India.’79
In the early years of the twentieth century, Lajpat Rai, with his communitarian
nationalist perspective, had given his attention to the language question which he
came to believe was responsible for creating ‘a barrier between educated Hindus
and Muslims’.80 He dealt with this issue in detail in an article which he wrote in
response to the appeal made by Sir William Wedderburn, one of the leading British
sympathisers of India, for maintaining Hindu–Muslim unity in the country. At the
outset, Lajpat Rai emphasised that both Hindus and Muslims needed to change their
respective outlook for resolving the Hindu–Muslim problem in the country.81 As
far as the language dispute was concerned, Lajpat Rai argued that Urdu could not
be accepted as the lingua franca of the country. He also observed that even some
members of the Muslim League ‘realise that such a change is not possible’.82 But
he did not himself act as a Hindu zealot while taking up the cause of Hindi. His
support to Hindi was rather subdued since at that time he was more keen in finding
an amicable solution of the language problem. He was still in favour of Nagari script
for imparting primary education in all provinces, but he did not wish to impose
his own view in this regard on others, arguing that the root cause of the linguistic
dispute ‘is not religious’.83 He noted: ‘Actually the quarrel is not on the issue of two
languages, Urdu and Hindi, rather on the issue of two scripts Arabic and Nagari.’
Finally, it seems that Lajpat Rai keeping in view the nationalist perspective as
well as the sensitivities of the Hindus and Muslims on the language question
remarked:
77
Lajpat Rai’s Presidential Address at the Congress session at Calcutta, 4 September 1920 (Ravindra
Kumar, ed., Selected Documents of Lala Lajpat Rai, 1906–1928, New Delhi, 1992, Vol. 2, p. 206).
78
Rai, Young India, p. 60.
79
Ibid., p. 79.
80
Nanda, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 332.
81
Lajpat Rai wrote:
Those who want to draw a wedge between the Hindus and Muslims exaggerated the evil effects of
their mutual relations and want to demonstrate the country’s lack of political maturity. But the irony
is that they are flogging the dead horse. Those Muslim brethren who agree with the viewpoint of the
political enemies are in fact tarnishing the name of Islam…. As for the Hindus those who behave in
this manner also bring a bad name to their glorious religion. Our Hindu brethren should know that the
object of religion is to bring people together and not to separate them apart. (Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 328)
82
Ibid., p. 333.
83
Ibid., pp. 333–34.

All are agreed on this that the language of communication whether in the court
or in the school should be easily understandable and that it should not be liter-
ary Urdu nor the Brijbhasha of Gokul and Ayodhya. There is another language
between the two which is known as Hindustani and is the common language
of the United Provinces. I call it Hindustani because it is language used by the
Hindus and Muslims both.84
He sincerely wished that ‘it would be good if the knowledgeable people of both
the sides took this issue out of the controversy and put their heads together to find
a mutually acceptable solution to it’.85
In the meantime, the intellectual and political leaders started making a search
for a language that would become a cultural marker of Indian national identity like
the nation states of the west. This obviously led to a major shift in the language
discourse that was going on at different levels and regions in the country. A number
of nationalist leaders felt that India needed its own language that would replace
English, which was perceived as a symbol of cultural subjugation of Indians under
foreign rule. Indeed, it was an arduous task for them to choose a unifying language
that would ‘overarch diversities of region and religion and other lines of cultural
and linguistic tradition’.86 This change in the framework of language discourse
expanded the scope of debate and discussion, and it became a part of ‘public-political
sphere’.87 As is well known, this debate was largely centred around Hindi language
and the script. Already since late nineteenth century, it was felt at different levels
that Hindi possessed potentialities of developing into a national language.88 But the
more significant issue for discussion at this stage was the nature of Hindi, which
appeared embedded with some ambiguities.
There were two distinct kinds of understanding about Hindi at the turn of the
twentieth century. First, a number of persons including some eminent writers and
leaders firmly held the view that the origins of Hindi could only be traced to the
Khari Boli or colloquial language used by the common people irrespective of
their religious beliefs. As Mahatma Gandhi believed, Hindi was ‘the language
of Svadeshi, the anti-thesis to English and he considered Hindi to be the spoken
language of village India that transcended divides of literacy, region and
religion’.89 He was very clear that Hindi as a national language could be written
in both Nagari and Perso–Arabic scripts. In this regard, he wrote for the first
time in Hind Swaraj in 1909: ‘A universal language for India should be Hindi,
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
David Lelyveld, ‘The Fate of Hindustani: The Colonial Knowledge and the Project of a National
Language’, in Orientalism and the Post-Colonial Predicament, ed. C.A. Breckenridge and P. van der
Veer, New Delhi, 1994, pp. 189–214.
87
Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940, New Delhi, 2002, p. 8.
88
For instance, see the statement of India Association, Lahore, in Education Commission, p. 107.
89
Orsini, p. 138.

50 / K.L. Tuteja
with the option of writing in Persian or Nagari characters. In order that Hindus
and Mahomedans may have closer relations, it is necessary to know both the
characters.90
In the 1920s, Lajpat Rai’s stand on Hindi/Nagari, however, again witnessed a
crucial change. During this period, he began to take keen interest in promoting
Hindi in Nagari script as a cultural resource for unifying the Hindu community
and also to establish its claim as the national language of the country. His attitude
towards the Hindi language was shaped both by his own increasing ideological
commitment to the Hindu community and by the nature of communal politics that
was now developing in Punjab and at the national level. After the withdrawal of the
Non-Cooperation, Lajpat Rai said at one of the meetings of the Hindu Mahasabha
that he was disturbed by some of the developments that appeared detrimental to
Hindu interests.91 This issue has been discussed by the author elsewhere in detail.92
The Hindu elite in Punjab was now feeling seriously concerned at the statutory
majority given to the Muslims in the Punjab Legislature under the Montagu-
Chelmsford reform scheme of 1919 and the working of dyarchy in the province.
Moreover, the violence witnessed in Kohat riots in 1924 created a strong sense
of fear among some sections of Hindus. They also had a grievance that Mahatma
Gandhi did not in their view effectively take up the cause of Hindu victims of the
riot. In this situation, Lajpat Rai and some other Hindu leaders of Punjab became
stridently active in organising Hindus. He himself decided to quit the Swaraj Party
led by C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru. As President of the Hindu Mahasabha, Lajpat
Rai set out a long programme for making Hindus a strong and unified commu-
nity. As a part of this programme, he appealed to the Hindus ‘to popularize Hindi
throughout the length and breadth of the country in cooperation with Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan’.93 Later at a Hindu conference in Burma, he underlined the importance
of Hindi language for making Hindus a strong community.94 Similarly, at the Punjab
Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, he espoused the cause of Hindi in Nagari script and sup-
ported the resolution which reiterated that the Hindi language was essential for ‘the
upkeep of ancient Hindu civilization and its rejuvenation’ in contemporary times.95
At the Rashtra Bhasha Sammelan organised at Kanpur under the leadership of
P.D. Tandon, Lajpat Rai made a strong plea for Hindi to be adopted as the national
language of the country.96
90
M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. A.J. Parel, New Delhi, 1997, p. 105.
91
Lajpat Rai’s Presidential Address delivered at the eighth session of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1925,
in Collected Works, ed. B.R. Nanda, 2008, Vol. 7, pp. 225–36.
92
K.L. Tuteja, ‘Hindu Consciousness, Communalism and the Congress in the Pre-Partition Punjab’,
Presidential Address (Modern India Section), Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Bangalore
session, 1997, pp. 453–55.
93
Ibid.
94
The Tribune, 12 January 1926.
95
Ibid., 15, 16 February 1927.
96
Ibid., 2 January 1926.

It is quite clear that Lajpat Rai took up the cause of Hindi as the language of the
Hindu community and, at the same time, emphasised its claim of being the national
language of the country. In simple words, in the 1920s, he appeared very close to
the Hindi–Hindu discourse that was in the making during the previous 30 years or
so in north India. But here, it is equally significant to mention that Lajpat Rai was
still opposed to the idea of Hindu Rashtra. For instance, at the session of the Hindu
Mahasabha (where Lajpat Rai had underlined the propagation of Hindi as neces-
sary for Hindus), he stated: ‘In my judgment the cry of a Hindu raj or a Muslim
raj is purely mischievous and ought to be discouraged.’97 He also remarked: ‘The
correct thing for us to do is [to strive] for a democratic Raj in which the Hindus,
Muslims and other communities of India may participate as Indians and not as
followers of any religion.’98 There was thus a considerable degree of contradiction
in his position. As noted earlier, he believed that Indian nationalism, which was
essentially a product of modern and liberal ideas, included all people irrespective
of their religious beliefs. But at the same time his ideas were also shaped by the
ideology of Arya Samaj, embodying a glorified vision of Hindu past, which kept
him close to what was thought to be the cause of the Hindu community. Especially
in the 1920s, Lajpat Rai’s commitment to Hindu identity gradually became more and
more pronounced, and he felt that the Muslims, as the main opponents of Hindus,
particularly in Punjab, could pose a serious threat to them. This was certainly a
regrettable sliding down from the communitarian–nationalist perspective, which
was the strong point of Lajpat Rai in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
97
Presidential Address at the eighth session of the Hindu Mahasabha, in Collected Works, ed. B.R.
Nanda, Vol. 7, pp. 225–36.
98
Ibid.

Nationalist representations
of the Mughal state:
The views of Tilak and Gandhi
Farhat Hasan
The Mughal Empire as the major polity in India preceding the colonial regime was seen by
British historians as a Muslim regime, imposed over a Hindu majority, and this fitted into their
picture of two irreconcilable religious camps, existing within India, whose mutual conflict was
kept at bay only because of the intervention of the colonial power. Tilak accepted this picture
and saw Shivaji as the leader of Hindu resistance against foreign, Muslim domination. His early
views were, however, modified in later years when he realised that overtures should be made
to Muslims in order to strengthen the national struggle. The tag of ‘foreign’ was removed from
the Mughals. It was argued that because Akbar’s successors no longer followed his enlightened
policy, Shivaji rose against the Mughals and so must be treated as a national hero. On the other
hand, Gandhi from his South Africa days was not prepared to denounce Muslim rulers, including
the Mughals, as foreigners or as evil. While not prepared to concede to any religion’s superiority
over another, he was critical of what he thought to be Akbar’s attempt to unite all religions into
one. On the other hand, he praised Mughal rulers for their tolerance and even defended Aurang-
zeb though on the basis only of what Mohammad Ali, for long his political associate, told him!
Unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi did not explicitly extol composite culture possibly because
while he wished that all religions tolerate each other, he did not want them to get mixed up.
Keywords: The Mughals, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Akbar, Aurangzeb
In British imperial writing, India was often portrayed as a conflict-ridden land,

where people are engaged in perpetual hostilities with one another. Religion is
considered a crucial (and in several imperial works, the only) marker of difference,
and so these conflicts are not seen as emerging from contestations over material
resources, but as emotional, ‘irrational’ and even ‘primitive’ reactions to differences
over religion, ritual and faith. By laying emphasis on discord and strife, these
writings served to legitimise imperial power, for that made the British imperial
state, with its ‘efficient’, ‘rational’ and rule-based administration, the only guarantee
of peace and order. James Mill thus describes a communal conflict in Banaras as,
‘characteristically illustrative—of the discordant elements of Indian society, which
are alone restrained from frequent and destructive conflict by the vigilance, vigour
and vitality of the ruling power’.1 Moreover, since these conflicts proceeded from
differences over transcendental issues, there was nothing the state could do to
1
James Mill and H.H. Wilson, The History of British India: From 1805 to 1835 (3 vols.),
London, 1958, Vol. I, p. 336.

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834791
Nationalist representations of the Mughal state / 53
prevent them nor, indeed, could it be held accountable for them. The colonial state
was indispensable for the Indian nation, but, quite paradoxically, oblivious of the
conflicts it itself generated and the discontents it aroused.2
The notion of ‘composite culture’ developed in Indian nationalist thought as a
direct challenge to the British imperial discourse on India. In the colonial period,
the discourse on composite culture valorised cultural differences, but assimilation
to an ideological centre remained an implicit objective. For some nationalists, the
centre was defined by Brahmanical Hinduism (e.g., Tilak) and, for some others,
by modern, democratic thought (e.g., Jawaharlal Nehru). Thus, while there were
disagreements on what constituted the ‘core’ of Indian civilisation, the concept of
composite culture was articulated in the period within the framework of a dialectical
tension between the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘margins’ of society.
History was indeed at the core of the concept of composite culture. The
concept refers to a shared space of intercultural communication, but for that space
to be anything more than a political ideal, it needed to be shown to have existed
in history. It is in this context that the representation of the Mughal Empire in the
Indian nationalist thought becomes important. History, in particular that of the
Mughal period, was also immensely useful in buttressing various positions in
the discourse on composite culture concerning the ideological forces that constituted
the ‘mainstream’ of Indian civilisation.
In the early phase of Indian national movement, Bal Gangadhar Tilak
devoted much of his intellectual energy and writing skills in the elaboration of
the cultural components of nationalism.3 He saw the core of Indian culture to
lie in Brahmanical Hinduism, but increasingly during the later years of his life
(in particular, after the partition of Bengal in 1905) he came to recognise, if still
secondarily, the contribution also of other cultures in the shaping of the Indian
nation. This led him to develop a more refined understanding of the Mughal state and
also prompted him to reformulate his ideological position concerning the Mughal
rulers and their adversaries (in particular, Shivaji). It is, therefore, important that
in studying Tilak’s perception of the Mughal state, we adopt a diachronic frame
of reference and be attentive to changes in his discourse on culture resulting from
the political developments of the period.
When, in 1896, Tilak introduced the Shivaji festival in Maharashtra, it was
to commemorate Maratha resistance against the Mughal state; for that alone, he
2
Under the influence of Said’s Orientalism, a corpus of scholarly work has emerged in the last few
decades on the imperialist writings on India, for example, Ronald Inden, Imagining India, Oxford,
1990; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Delhi, 1990.
3
For an introduction to the political career and broad ideas of B.G. Tilak, see Stanley A. Wolpert,
Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1962; S.L. Karandikar, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak: The Hercules and Prometheus of Modern India,
Poona, 1957; Ram Gopal, Lokmanya Tilak: A Biography, Bombay, 1956; T.L. Shay, The Legacy of the
Lokmanya: The Political Philosophy of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, London, 1956; I.M. Reisner and N.M.
Goldberg, eds., Tilak and the Struggle for Indian Freedom, New Delhi, 1956.

54 / Farhat Hasan
saw Shivaji as ‘the great man, who laid the foundation of our empire, who upheld
our self-respect as Hindus, and who gave particular direction to our religion’.4
Maratha resistance against the Mughals was, according to him, a movement for
the independence of the Hindu nation. Shivaji festival was thus inaugurated in ‘the
memory of the political heroes who had worked body and soul for independence
and who had thereby protected our religion’.5 In the early writings of Tilak, there
was, therefore, an identification of nationalism with Indian culture and of that
culture with Hinduism. The Mughal state was depicted as a foreign state, distant and
alien to the realm of Indian culture. Maratha resistance was thus seen as a struggle
against foreign rule, and its success as the resurgence of the Hindu nation. To the
charge that Shivaji treacherously murdered Afzal Khan in 1659, Tilak retorted:
If thieves enter our house and we have not strength enough in our fists to drive
them back, we should without hesitation lock them up and burn them alive.
God has not conferred upon the foreigners the grant inscribed on a copper plate
to the people of Hindustan.6
In the early writings of Tilak, it is the Hindu faith that defines the Indian nation,
and non-Hindus constitute its hostile ‘other’. Since it was Hinduism that consti-
tuted the national identity, the Mughal state was conceived as an extraneous force,
foreign and oppressive for the Indian people. The identification of nationalism with
Hinduism is candidly spelt out by Tilak in the following words:
The common factor in Indian society is the feeling of Hindutva. I do not speak of
Muslims and Christians at present because everywhere the majority of our society
consists of Hindus. We say that the Hindus of the Punjab, Bengal, Maharashtra,
Telangana (Andhra) and Dravida (Madras) are one, and the reason for this is
only Hindu dharma. There may be different doctrines in the Hindu dharma, but
certain principles can be found in common, and because of this alone a sort of
feeling that we belong to one religion has remained among people speaking
different languages in such a vast country. This feeling of being one is still alive
in different provinces.7
Tilak’s nationalist thought underwent a profound metamorphosis during the latter

part of his life, in particular after the partition of Bengal in 1905. The change is
reflected in the way he describes swaraj. Elaborating on the concept in 1916, he
drew a distinction between an ‘alien’ and a ‘bad’ state. While one might disagree
on whether the colonial rule was ‘good’ or ‘bad’, there could be no disagreement
4
Kesari, xvi: 15 (April 14, 1896), 2.
5
Kesari, xvii: 22 (June 1, 1897), 3.
6
Kesari, xvii: 24 (June 15, 1897), 3.
7
Quoted in Wolpert, op. cit., pp. 135–36.

over its alien nature. The nationalist resistance against the state, explains Tilak,
was not necessarily because it was a ‘bad’ state (in Tilak’s opinion), but because
it was an ‘alien’ state. The struggle for swaraj was thus a movement to establish a
state we could call our own. As he says,
Those who are ruling over you do not belong to your religion, race or even
country. The question whether this rule of the English Government is good
or bad is one thing. The question of ‘one’s own’ and ‘alien’ is quite another.
Do not confuse the two.8
In quite a reversal of his earlier position, Tilak then goes on to describe the Mughals
(he still insistently calls their period that of ‘Muhammadan rule’), along with the
Rajputs and the Marathas as so many swarajyas.9 Unlike the British, therefore, the
Mughals are no more foreigners and aliens.
How does one define a state as ‘alien’? As mentioned earlier, it was primarily
owing to religious beliefs and practices that Tilak characterised both the Mughals
and the British as foreigners and invaders. In a major departure from his earlier
position, Tilak argues that it is not religion or race, but lack of concern for the
people of the country that defines a state as ‘alien’. He says,
Alienness is certainly not concerned with white or black skin. Alienness is not
concerned with religion. Alienness is not concerned with trade or profession.
I do not consider him an alien who wishes to make arrangement whereby that
country in which he has to live, his children have to live, may see good days
and be benefited.10
And again: ‘He who does what is beneficial to the people of this country, be he a
Muhammadan or an Englishman, is not alien’.11 The English were aliens because
of their views and thoughts, but above all, because, ‘their general conduct is such
that their minds are not inclined to particularly benefit those people to whom they
are aliens’.12
If the Mughals, unlike the British, were not aliens, then how does Tilak justify
his adulation for Shivaji? In his earlier writings, as mentioned earlier, Shivaji was
depicted as symbolising the Hindu (and for that reason, truly Indian) resistance
against foreign rule. With his new perception, Tilak depicts Shivaji in far more
inclusive terms, and his resistance against the Mughals is not seen in any explicit
8
Tilak’s speech at Belgaum, dated 1 May 1916; cited from Ravindra Kumar, ed., Selected
Documents of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1880–1920), 4 volumes, Delhi, 1992, Vol. 4, pp. 73–74.
9
Ibid., p. 74.
10
Tilak’s speech at Ahmednagar, dated 31 May 1916; cited from Kumar, op. cit., pp. 93–109
(this particular reference is on p. 96).
11
Ibid., p. 96.
12
Ibid.

56 / Farhat Hasan
communal colours. In an article entitled, ‘Is Shivaji a National Hero’, published

in the Mahratta, in its 24 June 1906 issue, he argued that Shivaji opposed the
Mughals and challenged them because their rule had turned tyrannical and had
become ‘unbearable to the people’.13 It is, therefore, not the alien or the foreign
character of Mughal state that is projected as reasons for Shivaji’s resistance,
but its degeneration into tyranny and oppression. Once again, Tilak drew a distinc-
tion between an ‘alien’ and a ‘bad’ state, and while the colonial state was depicted
as the classic example of the former, the Mughal state was depicted, at least in
Aurangzeb’s time, as an example of the latter. By drawing such a distinction, Tilak
manages to valorise the Maratha attacks against the Mughals, while emphasising
the qualitative and structural differences between the colonial and the Mughal
forms of government. The Mughals were not ‘foreign’, but still ‘bad’ rulers. It is
this that distinguishes them, in qualitative terms, from their successors, the British.
It is this again that explains and allows Tilak to celebrate the Maratha resistance.
In the same article, he made a further discursive separation between ‘spirit’ and
‘deeds’ and argued that, ‘what makes Shivaji a national hero for the present is the
spirit which actuated him throughout and not his deeds as such. His life clearly
shows that Indian races do not so soon lose the vitality which gives them able
leaders at critical times’.14 Tilak is here separating the individual from his actions.
Shivaji’s political activities are treated as secondary; if he is a national hero, it is
because he represents in his personality the complete manifestation of the qualities
of the ‘Indian race’—courage, discipline and wisdom, and above all, ‘vitality’.
In the colonial period, when all Indians were politically disempowered, his example
was a source of inspiration for both the Hindus and Muslims:
Times have changed, and—the Muhamedans and the Hindus stand in the same
boat or on the same platform so far as the political condition of the people is
concerned. Can we not both of us derive some inspiration from the life of Shivaji
under these circumstances? That is the real question.15
Tilak’s hostility against the Mughals is quite muted, and if he still lauds Shivaji,
it is not because he was their adversary, but because he imbibed the spirit of the
Indian people. For the same reason, he believes that Indians could also have a
festival to commemorate Akbar.16
Tilak could never give up his faith in political Hinduism. However, increasingly
after 1905, he could see its limitations and was becoming more receptive to the
idea of composite nationalism. This made him less critical of the Mughal state and
13
B.G. Tilak, ‘Is Shivaji Not a National Hero?’, Mahratta, 26 June 1906; R. Kumar, op. cit.,
pp. 26–28 (this particular reference on p. 26).
14
Ibid., pp. 27–28.
15
Ibid., p. 27.
16
Ibid.

persuaded him to accept its contribution to the cultural heritage of India. The core
of Indian nationalism was still high-caste Hinduism, but, in his later incarnation,
he was willing to see its coexistence with the Indo-Islamic culture, of which the
Mughal state was one of the most significant representations.
More than Tilak, it was Gandhi, of course, who believed in composite nationalism
and found India’s pluralistic traditions to be its integral component. Indeed, it is true
that he often expressed his politics in the media of Hindu idioms and symbols, but
there is in his nationalist thought a deep faith in India’s composite culture. There
is, therefore, a noticeable appreciation in his writings of the contribution of the
Mughals in the evolution of Indian civilisation.
Delivering a lecture on ‘Hinduism’, in Johannesburg, as early as 1905, Gandhi
described the composite culture of India to be a product of the dynamic interaction
between the two great religions of the world, that is, Islam and Hinduism. Islam,
he believes, gave to Hinduism the notion of equality, whereas Hinduism gave to
Islam the spirit of tolerance.17 Islam is not a religion of the sword, and its extra-
ordinary success in India was because ‘it offered equality to all that came within its
pale, in the manner that no other religion in the world did’.18 Interestingly, even as
he attributes the appeal of Islam to lie in its message of equality, he finds credible
evidence of the use of force in its spread in India.19 It was Hindu tolerance then
that helped create an environment of peaceful coexistence and the conditions
necessary for the emergence of composite culture. We see here Gandhi slipping into
the Orientalist assumptions that projected Hinduism as a tolerant faith and Islam its
reverse. He further argued that the spirit of tolerance in Hinduism was imbibed by
many Muslim rulers in India, and one of the gifts of Hinduism to Indian Muslims
has been a ruler like Akbar: ‘It was Hinduism that gave Mahomedanism its Akbar,
who, with unerring insight, recognised the tolerant spirit and adopted it himself in
ruling India.’20 Presumably, the implied suggestion here is that the Islamic tradition
was incapable of producing a tolerant ruler like Akbar, and that it was the influence
of Hinduism that explains his emergence from within an Indo-Islamic background.
It has to be borne in mind that these were early views of Gandhi, much before
he came back to India; and in his more mature, later writings, he insisted on
seeing tolerance, and even non-violence, to be an inherent feature of all religions,
including Islam.21 In fact, when it was put to him if he considered all religions in
India equal, he was quite forthright:
Of course, I do. I cannot do otherwise, as I believe Islam and other great
religions to be as true as my own. India is the richer for the cultures that Islam and
17
This lecture was delivered by Gandhi at the Masonic Temple in Johannesburg under the
auspices of the Johannesburg Theosophical Lodge, on 11 March 1905. The details of the lecture were
published in 18 March 1905 issue of The Star. It is reproduced in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
(hereinafter CWG), IV, pp. 375–77.
18
Ibid., p. 376.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., p. 377.
21
See, for example, Harijan, 11 November 1939; CWG, LXX, pp. 333–35.

58 / Farhat Hasan
Christianity brought with them. I regard the present antagonisms as a passing

phase.22
It is surprising that, for a man so committed to religious equality and peaceful
coexistence, Akbar’s religious thought and policy should appear misguided and
erroneous. Akbar did receive some appreciation from Gandhi, but got little credit
for what he supposedly did to promote religious integration. Under the influence of
British historians, Gandhi believed that Akbar was attempting ‘a fusion of religions’,
which was, ‘a dream not to be realized’.23 Not only was such a fusion unrealistic,
it was, in Gandhi’s perception, also undesirable:
I do not know what Akbar dreamt. I do not aim any fusion. Each religion has
its own contribution to make to human evolution. I regard the great faiths of
the world as so many branches of a tree, each distinct from the other, though
bearing the same source.24
Gandhi’s reserve against Akbar’s religious policy suggests that in his articulation
of the composite culture, he treats the religious boundaries as inviolable and
sacrosanct. It is not assimilation, but differentiation that constitutes, in his view, the
crux of India’s composite culture. To some extent, Gandhi does seem to believe in
the unity of all religions, but he is still averse to the idea of dissolution of religious
identities, within a shared ethical or spiritual framework. It is, of course, a different
matter that ‘fusion of religions’ was something that was never attempted by Akbar
either, and that Gandhi’s understanding of the state’s religious policy under Akbar
is not historically accurate.
Except for that singular, if significant, objection, Gandhi’s assessment of Akbar
remains quite favourable. He is appreciated for his administrative efficiency, for
ensuring communal peace and for his concern for his subjects. The Mughals, he
believes, lost the empire to the British because they had, in quick succession,
removed themselves from the character and qualities of Akbar. As he says:
Akbar’s successors lost the splendour of the Mughal Empire of his time, because
they lost, one by one, Akbar’s qualities of character. Jahangir lost one, Shahjahan
lost one more, Aurangzeb more still and successors lost almost all. The result
was that they lost the Empire to the British. The Indian people in modern times
have behaved like Akbar’s successors.25
What precisely does Gandhi mean by behaving ‘like Akbar’s successors’? Such a
behaviour, he explains, is represented in ‘our inveterate selfishness, our inability
to make sacrifices for the country, our timidity, our hypocrisy and our ignorance’.26
22
Harijan, 28 January 1939; CWG, LXVIII, p. 323.
23
Harijan, 11 November 1939; CWG, LXX, p. 334.
24
Harijan, 28 January 1939; CWG, LXVIII, p. 323.
25
Navajivan, 27 June 1920; CWG, XVII, p. 515.
26
Ibid., p. 517.

It is only in comparison with Akbar that his successors came out petty and small.
Gandhi was well aware of the contribution of the Mughals to Indian civilisation.
He was generally quite generous to them and even to Aurangzeb. Speaking at
the plenary session of the Round Table Conference in London in 1931, he held
the British rule to be solely responsible for communal conflicts and argued that
in the Mughal period, Hindus and Muslims were living in peace with each other:
‘In those days they were not known to quarrel at all.’27 Interestingly, he then went
on to defend the rule of Aurangzeb and contended that the picture of Aurangzeb
as a religious fanatic, hostile to Hindus, was a fictitious concoction of the British
imperial historians. Unfortunately, in proving them wrong, Gandhi could muster
no credible authority and was forced to rely on the authority of Muhammad Ali,
whose credentials as an historian, to say the least, were doubtful. In his own words:
The late Muhammad Ali often used to tell me, and he was himself a bit of an
historian, he said, ‘If God’—‘Allah’, as he called God—gives me life I propose
to write the history of Mussalman rule in India; and then I will show through
documents that British people have erred, that Aurangzeb was not so vile as he
has been painted by the British historians; that the Mogul rule was not so bad
as it has been shown to us in British history.28
He made the same point about Aurangzeb in an issue of Young India and confidently
asserted that there was no instance of a communal riot in the reign of Aurangzeb.29
Gandhi’s apologia for Aurangzeb is intriguing. One explanation for it could be
that he had become a potent symbol of divisive politics in colonial India. Hindu
communalists saw in him the most complete representation of Muslim fanaticism
and intolerance. The Muslim communalists, on the other hand, considered him
to be the embodiment of pure Islam that had been defiled and compromised by
traditions of religious syncretism and state patronage for interreligious synthesis.
In reinterpreting Aurangzeb as a much-maligned and misunderstood ruler, Gandhi
was presumably seeking to frustrate his iconographic mobilisation by communal
forces. There was a perceptible attempt in Gandhi to appropriate Aurangzeb’s figure
for the Indian national movement, in particular for his own mode of nationalist
mobilisation. Thus, while exhorting Indians to make their own cloth, he told them
that ‘they have the example of Aurangzeb who made his own caps’.30 In a piece
published in the Navajivan in 1921, he asked the rich people to ‘get busy with the
spinning wheel and the loom’ and cited the example of Aurangzeb to inspire them:
‘The rich too should work for the good of the people. Aurangzeb had little need
27
Proceedings of the Plenary Session of the Round Table Conference, London, 1 December 1931;
CWG, XLVIII, pp. 365–68 (for this particular reference, see p. 366).
28
Ibid., p. 366.
29
Young India, 19 November 1931; CWG, XLVIII, p. 263.
30
Young India, 27 July 1920; CWG, XVIII, p. 70.

60 / Farhat Hasan
to work, but he used to sew caps’.31 When it was reported to him that the Sikhs
in the Punjab saw hand-spinning and weaving as effeminate activities, unworthy
of martial races, Gandhi gently chided them and reminded them of Aurangzeb:
‘Aurangzeb was not the less of a soldier for sewing caps’.32
The Mughal state generally received a favourable treatment from Gandhi because
the colonial state remained his frame of reference. Unlike the British historians
who projected colonial rule as a definite advance on the Mughals, Gandhi com-
pared them only to emphasise the deterioration that had occurred under the British.
Like the ‘economic nationalists’33 earlier, Gandhi viewed one crucial difference
between the Mughals and the colonial state to lie in the latter’s alien nature. The
Mughals had settled down in India and made it their home, whereas the British were
foreigners whose only interest in India was to drain its resources for the benefit of
their homeland. He says:
Besides the sixty crores of rupees that go out of the country every year by way
of payment for the foreign cloth that we import, millions more are sent out of
the country. During the days of the Gazni, Ghori and the Mogul Empire, the
wealth of the country stayed within it, but under this Government, the pension
of all officers are sent out of the country. How can one rest when the country is
being robbed in this manner?34
Like the early nationalists, he believed that India had been impoverished to a far
greater extent under the British than the Mughals.35 He even argued that there was
greater freedom under the Mughals than the colonial state, holding the examples
of Rana Pratap and Shivaji as evidence for the same. In his own words:
We want to bask in the sunshine of freedom, but the enslaving system

emasculates our nation. The pre-British period was not a period of slavery.
We had some sort of swaraj under Mughal rule. In Akbar’s time, the birth of a
Pratap was possible, and in Aurangzeb’s time a Sivaji could flourish. Has one
hundred and fifty years of the British rule produced any Pratap and Sivaji?36
It does appear quite odd that Gandhi should be crediting the Mughal rulers for the
emergence of Rana Pratap and Shivaji and commend the Mughals for providing
conditions for them to flourish. Ordinarily, these were the very persons whose
31
Navajivan, 20 October 1921; CWG, XXI, p. 325.
32
Young India, 10 November 1921; CWG, XXI, p. 404.
33
The term ‘economic nationalists’ was coined by Bipan Chandra to refer to those early
nationalists who developed an economic critique of colonialism (B. Chandra, Rise and Growth of
Economic Nationalism in India: Economic Policies of Indian National Leadership, 1880–1905,
New Delhi, 1966.
34
Navajivan, 30 March 1930; CWG, XLIII, p. 116.
35
Young India, 26 June 1921; CWG, XX, p. 250.
36
Young India, 13 April 1921; CWG, XIX, pp. 477–78.

examples would be cited as evidence of the oppression and tyranny of Mughal

rule. Perhaps, the point he is making, though it is not spelt out here and is suggested
in another context at a different place, is that the Mughal state was not a modern
state—intrusive, regular and absolute. It was non-invasive, intermittent and, for
all its display of power, quite fragile. It was, therefore, structurally inclined to
bear political spaces of dissent and resistance, in the manner that the modern state
was not capable of doing. The modern state, by virtue of its sheer strength and
efficiency, obliterates all dissent, whereas the precolonial Mughal state was forced
to tolerate political resistance, if for no other reason, because of its vulnerable and
inefficient nature. That is how he contrasted the two states while critiquing a book
by Manmohan Gandhi on cotton production in India. The author had argued that the
Mughal period was marked by repeated massacres of artisans, craftsmen and other
common people, and because of these routine massacres, no industry or skill could
develop in India. Gandhi did not deny that during the Mughal period massacres
did take place, but their impact, he believed, was confined to the upper echelons
of the society and scarcely affected the common people. The reach of the state did
not extend to the masses, and it was not until the establishment of colonialism that
the state was able to extend its control over them:
Writing about the Mughal period you [Manmohan Gandhi] say that there were
then such frequent and widespread massacres that no profession could flourish.
There are two errors in this view. Such massacres were never widespread. Before
Akbar, no Muslim ruler had entered villages. The massacres always took place
in cities, and there too, they had little effect on the artisan classes. Formerly,
the government touched the lives of only those who were connected with the
administrative machinery. It is only in the present age that governments have
become eager to extend their grip over entire populations. And, among them
all, the British Government has acquired the utmost efficiency in this. It is this
efficiency which is ruining us, for British rule is inspired by no philanthropic
motives.37
In Gandhi’s discourse on composite culture, the Mughal state is assigned

an important place. With the colonial state as the point of reference, Gandhi saw in
the Mughal state greater freedom—a prerequisite to the sustenance of composite
culture—than was available in the modern, colonial state. There was greater
tolerance of heterogeneity and difference, and this was because the Mughal state, in
contrast to the modern state, did not intervene in the lives of the people and made
no efforts to mould their social and cultural lives. There were non-appropriated
political spaces in the rule structure that provided sustenance to the forces of
resistance and dissent. This was in contrast to the modern states where, through
37
CWG, XLIII, p. 11 (italics ours).

62 / Farhat Hasan
techniques of surveillance and ‘panopticism’ (to use a Foucauldian term), such

spaces become non-existent. It was under such an open-ended political system that
the composite culture of India developed in the Mughal period. It was Gandhi’s
aversion to state intervention in the lives of individuals that led him to reproach
Akbar’s religious views. Gandhi’s views on Akbar, as mentioned earlier, also
suggest that in his articulation of composite culture, it was not religious integration,
but a tolerance of difference that he envisaged as its core component. For all his
faith in composite culture, Gandhi yet considered religious identities as sacrosanct
and inviolable.

SOURCEs
Iran and Rabindranath Tagore:

Information from files of the
national archives of Iran
Elham Malekzadeh
During the process of Iran’s modernisation, there arose much interest in modern literature
outside Iran. As Rabindranath Tagore had acquired a worldwide reputation, it was inevitable
that intellectuals in Iran should also be drawn towards his writings. Tagore visited Iran twice
at the invitation of Reza Shah’s government (1932 and 1934). Subsequently, when India became
independent and Iran wished to cement ties with India, there were ambitious plans to celebrate
Tagore birth centenary, 1961–2. A severe political crisis breaking out in Iran at that time,
however, led to a practical cancellation of the celebrations. The entire story of Tagore’s two
visits to Iran and the abortive birth centenary celebration are reconstructed from documents
in Iran’s National Archives.
Keywords: Rabindranath Tagore, Reza Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran, Malikush Shuara Bahar,
Jawaharlal Nehru
When Reza Shah ascended the throne in October 1925, the idea of reviving the
glory of ‘pre-Islamic Iran’ that had flourished in the thought of the intellectuals
of the ‘constitutional’ era (1905–9) was revived. This brought India into focus as
another country with an ancient civilisation, and so Reza Shah’s government decided
to expand its political and cultural relations with the people of India. Under the
influence of this sentiment, Rabindranath Tagore, poet, writer and thinker of Bengal,
was invited to visit Iran. In those years, many Indian scholars knew Persian and some
spoke it. Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath, knew Persian and used to
read out the sonnets of Hafez to his teenage son. However, Rabindranath himself
did not know Persian and had become familiar with Persian poets, especially Hafez,
through translations. Moreover, politically, the elites of India who were dissatisfied
with British domination of their country had in those days a good opinion of Reza
Shah and his social reforms aiming to modernise his country.
Tagore was a staunch supporter of India’s freedom movement, and this too
suited Reza Shah, who in his foreign policy gradually tended to move away from
England and get closer to Germany. Liberal intellectuals such as Mohammad Ali
Foroughi, Ali Asghar Hekmat, Seyyed-Hasan Taqizadeh, Ali Akbar Davar and
other scholars also advised Reza Shah’s government to invite Rabindranath. By this
invitation, Iranian authorities also indicated their disregard of British sentiments.
Tagore accepted the invitation to come to Iran.

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834792
64 / Elham Malekzadeh
Tagore’s First Journey to Iran
In a letter to the Interior Ministry in 1 May 1931, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
referred to Tagore’s distinguished and privileged status and informed the Interior
Ministry of the invitation the Iranian government had extended to him (Document
No. 297-45689-4, Iran National Archives). Tagore’s party was supposed to travel
by ship and after reaching the port of Khorramshahr, Tagore and his party were
to travel overland to Tehran through Lorestan, Boroujerd, Arak and Qom. The
Interior Ministry instructed the officials of the cities en route to extend honour to
and provide facilities for the invited guests as they travelled en route (Document
No. 293-4370-5, Iran National Archives).
While the exact date of Tagore’s arrival was as yet not known, the Interior
Ministry telegraphed the officials to perform their duties as instructed while
receiving Tagore and his party (Document No. 293-4370-12, Iran National
Archives). The representative of the Iranian government also paid Tagore’s party’s
travel expenses with the allocation of credits. In addition, the Interior Ministry
informed the officials of the cities named above that part of the travel expenses of
Tagore and his companions should be provided by their municipalities (Document
Despite the coordination and preparations made by the cultural authorities of
Iran, a statement issued in May 1931 by the Foreign Ministry in a letter (No. 8119)
to the Interior Ministry announced the postponement of Tagore’s arrival because
Tagore had suffered a heart attack, and his medical advisers asked him to postpone
his journey to Iran (Document No. 293-4370-9, Iran National Archives).
After a few months, Tagore recovered his health, and so the issue of his travel
to Iran was again raised in the Cabinet, and his journey was rescheduled on
4 April 1932.
This time, the plan and the route changed and Bushehr replaced Khorramshahr
as Tagore’s port of disembarkation. The Interior Ministry (in a telegram) communi-
cated to the authorities of Bushehr, Shiraz and Isfahan (Document No. 291-1739-1,
Iran National Archives) on 16 March 1932 that ‘Tagore, the famous Indian scholar
who has a great position’ in company with nine of his companions would arrive at
Bushehr on the 4th of April, then he would go to Shiraz by car and after a night’s
stay, proceed to Isfahan and Tehran. In the telegram it was emphasised: ‘In terms
of hospitality, they should be treated warmly and any facilities possible, such as
home, car, entertainment and travel equipment, etc, should be provided to them
without any delay’. The Iranian government provided full travel expenses to the
administrations of Bushehr, Shiraz and Isfahan (Document No. 293-4370-3, Iran
National Archives).
Tagore arrived in Iran with a few days’ delay, but according to the letter No.
864 of the Department of Education dated 24 April 1932, he had by then arrived at
Isfahan. A group of scholars of the city welcomed him at 18 km ahead of Isfahan
(Document No. 291-1739-1, Iran National Archives).

Iran and Rabindranath Tagore / 65
Tagore, along with Dinshah Irani, the Chairman of the Association of

Zoroastrians in India, visited the Bushehr Sa’adat School. News of it was carried
in Tehran’s newspapers, and even Habl Al-Matin, a Persian weekly, published in
Calcutta, printed a detailed report of it.1 Upon Tagore’s arrival in Tehran, coinciding
with his 70th birthday, Malek o’Shoara Bahar, a democrat and renowned poet of
Iran, wrote a long poem and dedicated it to Tagore. In this poem, Bahar described
how God Almighty created a harp, but the only one who could play it gently and
beautifully was Tagore. Praising Tagore’s personality and ideas, Bahar ended his
poem with a reference to Tagore’s arrival in Iran.
In Shiraz, Tagore visited the mausoleums of Saadi and Hafez and the site of
Persepolis, and in Isfahan, the Naqsh-i Jahan Square and the magnificent mosques
there. Arriving in Tehran Tagore, along with his wife, Pratima Devi, his secretary,
Chakravarti, Dinshah Irani and his interpreter Abdol Hossein Sepanta, took part in
many meetings in Tehran. He met Ali Dashti, Rashid Yasemi, Abbas Eqbal, Saeed
Nafisi and Nasrollah Falsafi, who were some of the most notable Iranian scholars
of the day. Tagore gave two lectures in Tehran, the first in the Hall of Masoudieh
palace and the other in the Iranian Literary Society. In both of the speeches, he
declared: ‘I’m an Iranian, and my ancestors travelled to India from this land and
I’m truly glad that I’ve travelled to my ancestral home’!
Tagore asked the Iranian government to send a professor to teach at the university
he had founded in India (Vishvabharati, Santiniketan). The request was accepted,
and Ebrahim Pourdavoud went to India. Tagore and his companions stayed in Iran
for 34 days and left Tehran, journeying to Qazvin, Hamadan and Kermanshah,
whereafter they returned to India through Baghdad.
Tagore’s Second Journey to Iran
In spite of his age and the consequential difficulty of travel, Tagore travelled to Iran
again at the age of 73 in 1934, in order to take part in the ‘Ferdowsi’s Millennium
Anniversary’ and the opening of Ferdowsi’s tomb. His visit was overshadowed by
the attention being paid to Ferdowsi and his epic on that occasion, and the present
writer failed to find the relevant material about his visit in Iran’s National Archives.
Celebration of Tagore’s Birth Centennial
About 30 years later (and 20 years after Tagore’s death), a Committee was convened
to celebrate the centennial birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in Calcutta.
Moshfegh Kazemi, the ambassador of Iran in India, asked the Iranian authorities to
provide the forenamed Committee with all the treatises and articles about Tagore
1
Cf. Farshad Ghorbanpoor, Indian Soul with Iranian Identity. Examiner’s Website, accessed on
6 October 2010.

published in Persian (in Iran) in order to display them at the exhibition to be held
on 1–3 January 1960 (Document No. 297-45689-226, Iran National Archives).
As the letter from the Iranian ambassador in Delhi was received, Dr Isa
Sedigh was appointed to the Ministry of Culture, and under him a more
serious effort was made for the Iranian government representatives to take part
in the celebration of the Tagore centenary. Both the Ministries of Culture and
Foreign Affairs dealt with the matter. As a first step, people like Zabihollah
Safa, Ali Akbar Siassi, Saeed Nafisi, Mohammad Moin, Mahmood Shahabi,
Dr Khatibi and others were chosen to represent Iran. With the efforts of the officials
of the National Library of Iran, it turned out that in addition to the articles and
translations of Tagore’s poetry published in the weekly magazine Armaghan from
1941 to 1946, a book tilted Rabindranath Tagore was also published in April 1932
by Mohammad Mohit-Tabatabaei (Document No. 297-45689-229, Iran National
Archives).
Rezazadeh Shafagh, who was the representative of Iran in the ceremony,
was selected because of his familiarity with the Indian culture and civilisation
and his knowledge about Iran–India relations (Document No. 297-45689-123,
Iran National Archives). He attended by the side of Iran’s Ambassador to Delhi in
the first ceremony of celebration of the centenary of Tagore’s birth on 1 January
1960, in Bombay (Document No. 297-45689-210, Iran National Archives).
The ceremony was inaugurated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and
was followed by celebration at Delhi in November 1961. A detailed report of the
ceremony was sent to Tehran by the Iranian ambassador, who later regularly sent
all the news about the other centennial ceremonies of Tagore’s birth to the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture (Document No. 297-45689-212,
Iran National Archives).
In one of these reports, No. 3710, 9 March 1961, the Department of
Cultural Relations of Foreign Affairs Ministry discussed the participation of
Iranian scholars at the Tagore’s birth centenary celebrations, including the
ceremony of 11th to 17th of November 1961, which was to be held in New Delhi.
The Department noted that
with the interest taken by the Government of India and especially that of the
Ministry of Technical and Cultural Affairs in celebrating these ceremonies in a
glorious manner, all the efforts made by our literary scholars and our cultural
institutions in this regard would have a great effect on the consolidation of our
cultural relations with India.
In 1960, Moshfegh Kazemi, Iran’s ambassador to Delhi, had recommended that

similar to the efforts of countries such as the USA, Britain, the Soviet Union,
Italy, West Germany, France, Yugoslavia and so on, the project of translation of
Tagore’s works into Persian should also be embarked upon, the aim being to take
up ‘eighteen selected works of Tagore as well as his other works to be translated

and published by Tehran University and the Imperial Society’ or the Ministry of
Culture (Document No. 297-45689-185/186/187, Iran National Archives).
The Iranian government was aware of the importance of Iran–India relations.
After India’s independence and partition in 1947, Iran struggled to consolidate
relations with India while maintaining good relations with Pakistan. At the
initiative of Dr Isa Sedigh, Minister of Culture, the Committee for the Centenary
of Tagore’s birth was formed at the Ministry of Culture. The aim of this committee
was to cement cultural ties with India taking advantage of the special relationship
between Tagore and Iran.
As part of this effort, Mr Barakat Ahmed, an official of the Embassy of India in
Tehran, was requested to provide the Ministry of Culture with the complete works
of Tagore, which had been published in English. These books were required for
the commission to choose proper works for translation.
From Tagore’s works, as received five of his plays were selected, namely ‘Post
Office’, ‘Sehysi’, ‘Malini’, ‘Mayarkela’ and ‘Raja Baini’ to be translated by the
‘Translation and Publishing Institute’, one of the best publishers of Iran (Document
No. 297-45689-109/120, Iran National Archives).
In 1955, a prominent Iranian scholar, Abdolhossein Zarrinkoob, had criticised
the earlier translations of Tagore’s works (plays such as ‘Chitra’ and ‘the Gardener’
and love poems translated by Abul-Fath Mojtabaei). He argued that
compared to the reputation of Western literature in Iran, Eastern literature is
not yet comparable. While all the works of third-degree French or Austrian
writers have been translated into Persian, our readers have not yet heard master-
pieces of Japanese or Arabic literature. The name of Rabindranath Tagore,
the great poet of India, has been widely known in Iran, but aside from the
translation of ‘Gardener’, so far, many of his works have not yet been translated
into Persian. Tagore is one of the greatest and most respected writers of this era.
His great sin is not to be a European. Nothing is more desirable than that our
young translators acquire a reputation for translating and adapting his works.
Probably if he was a European, the authorities would put his name on streets,
shops, institutes or libraries.
As many Iranian intellectuals prepared the ground by writing literary works,
translating poetry and fiction and publishing literary magazines, made Iranian
readers more familiar with the culture and literature of the Eastern countries.
Dr Matin-Daftari, the Head of the Iran–India Cultural Association, also wrote a
letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, Jafar Sharif-Emami, regarding the recognition
of the position of Tagore, while expressing his dismay at the absence of a
coherent plan for the celebration of the centennial birth of Tagore (Document
The University of Tehran seems to have worked more closely to attend to the
Tagore’s birthday celebration. Dr Farhad, the Chancellor of the University, in his
report to the Ministry of Culture on 11 May 1961 mentioned the following plans:

1. A volume of the ‘Literature Faculty Magazine’ would be devoted to

introducing Tagore and his thoughts.
2. Republishing of Tagore’s ‘Hundred Poems’ revised by Ebrahim Pourdavoud
would be undertaken.
3. It was proposed to name a high school after ‘Tagore’.
4. One of the plays by Tagore would be translated into Persian with a view to
performing it at the Tehran University.
5. ‘The Universal Human’ to be translated under the supervision of Dr
Sooratgarto and published by Tehran University Press.
There were also suggestions for Films and Music pieces composed by Tagore to be
performed (Document No. 297-45689-51/52, Iran National Archives). The Ministry
of Culture also received other suggestions, one of them (without number and date)
being titled ‘Temporary Proposal and Suggestions for the Celebration Committee
of Tagore in Iran’. In it, it was proposed that:
1. The commemoration week of Tagore in Iran be scheduled in November
1961.
2. Professor Humayun Kabir, the Minister of Culture of India, who was
going to travel to Italy in November, should be invited to visit Tehran, so that
while returning from Rome, he would attend the opening ceremony of
Tagore celebrations in Iran.
3. Radio, TV and Press be informed of the arrangements in advance, with
invitation to cover the celebrations.
4. One of the plays by Tagore to be translated into Persian and performed in
Tehran during the Tagore commemoration week.
5. A book containing articles about Tagore to be prepared and published.
Finally, the following proposals were approved for implementation:
1. A high school in Tehran should be named for ‘Tagore’ (Document No.
297-45689-51, Iran National Archives). Thus, the name of ‘Shirin’ High
School, which was under the control of the Culture Department of the fifth
district of Tehran, was changed to ‘Tagore’ High School.
2. A street should be named after ‘Tagore’. Therefore, ‘Shiraz’ street in the
central part of the city, which was previously called ‘Behjat Abad’, was
renamed after ‘Tagore’ in the winter of 1962. As Mohammad Derakhshesh,
the Minister of Culture, asked the Tehran municipality to carry out the
renaming, remarking mistakenly that the Municipality of New York City
had changed the name of the largest square of the city, known as Times
Square into Tagore Square! (Document No. 297-45689-51, Iran National
Archives.)
3. The third suggestion of the Department of ‘Higher Education and Cultural
Relations’ was to hang a photograph of Tagore and a tablet about his life

at the Jordan Hall of Alborz High School, which Tagore had visited during
his trip to Iran, when he had lectured at the forenamed hall.
4. Mahmoud Tafazoli was to compile a brochure celebrating the centennial
of Tagore’s birth and containing his biography with several pieces of his
works.
5. Another suggestion was to hold a ceremony to commemorate the centennial
birth of Tagore in a high school in Tehran.
6. For teachers to get more familiar with Tagore, it was decided to organise
a meeting (in the Hall of Culture) on one of the days in the fourth week
of Aban (i.e., November), which coincided with the ceremony of Tehran
University for Tagore.
7. Reading the message of the Shah and the Prime Minister at the beginning of
each meeting organised during the birth centennial celebration (Document
But in the documents of the Archives, there is no evidence of how the programme
was implemented. It is possible that the programme never took off because the
proposed Tagore celebrations coincided with a very tense crisis of contemporary
Iranian history. In August 1960, the elections of the Twentieth National Parliament
took place with massive commitment of fraud. This led to large-scale protests,
forcing Mohammad Reza Shah to order the nullification of the election (Document
No. 297-45689-39, Iran National Archives). But the turmoil continued, and the
protest of college students of Tehran University turned into a major political
upheaval that overshadowed every other issue, including the centenary of the
Tagore’s birth.2 Finally, after several months of delay, in January 1962, officially,
the name of ‘Shirin High School’ was changed to ‘Tagore High School’ as had
been proposed.
Note
Relevant documents from Iran National Archives.
Document Nos.
291-1739-1 297-45689-37 297-45689-185
293-4370-3 297-45689-39 297-45689-186
293-4370-5 297-45689-40 297-45689-187
293-4370-7 297-45689-51 297-45689-210
293-4370-9 297-45689-52 297-45689-212
293-4370-12 297-45689-109 297-45689-217
297-45689-4 297-45689-120 297-45689-226
297-45689-28 297-45689-123 297-45689-229
2
Nejati, G.-R. The Political Twenty-five-years History of Iran (from the Coup d’état to the
Revolution), Tehran, 1992: 170–1.

DEBATE
Akbar’s religious policy in the early phase

of his reign: A complex story
Iqtidar Alam Khan

The author’s earlier thesis that Akbar in his early years tended mainly to follow a policy aiming
to please orthodox Muslim elements possibly oversimplified a complex situation, as if Akbar
had either to be orthodox or tolerant. In a fresh review of the entire debate, it is here argued
that the picture remained complex until about 1578, with Akbar’s own political interests and
personal inclinations often pulling policy on the ground in different directions. It was only after
1578 that tolerance in the form of Sulh-i Kul (absolute peace) became his major principle for
dealing with different sections of his subjects.
Keywords: Akbar, Shaik̲ h̲ ‘Abdu’l Nabī, Shi‘as, Hindus, harem
As stated in my article, ‘The Nobility under Akbar and the Development of his
Religious Policy’, originally published in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society
(1968),1 it was aimed at stimulating fresh thinking over some of the well-known
generalisations about the evolution of Akbar’s religious policy so often repeated in
textbooks. I am pleased that Shireen Moosvi has come out with arguments contesting
my finding that prior to 1579, on occasions Akbar pursued a policy mainly aimed
at winning the sympathy of orthodox Sunni elements among Indian Muslims.2
Before I discuss the points raised by Moosvi, I consider it imperative to notice
a curious piece of evidence which, if accepted as authentic, would suggest that as
early as 1560, Akbar was known among those close to him as having developed
close ties with Hindus. Such evidence, if genuine, would strengthen Moosvi’s
implied suggestion that Akbar’s tolerant attitude in matters relating to religious
beliefs was ingrained in him from his early years. Though she has not referred to
this evidence, it is important that it should first receive our attention.
The evidence is represented by two lines of Turkish poetry included in Bairam
Khan’s Diwān.3 Aziz Ahmad, who first cited these lines, treats them as the earliest
record testifying to ‘a natural lack of prejudice on Akbar’s part against Hindus,
even a liking for them’. Bairam Khan in these lines is supposed to be reproaching
1
Included in I.A. Khan, India’s Polity in Age of Akbar, Ranikhet, 2016, pp. 118–133.
2
S. Moosvi, ‘Akbar’s Enterprise of Religious Conciliation in the Early Phase, 1561–78, Spontaneous
or Motivated’, Studies in People’s History 4(1) (2017), pp. 46–52.
3
Dīwān-i Bairam Khān Khān-i Khānān, ed. S. Ḥusamuddin Rashidi and Mohammad Sabir
(with introduction by Mahmud al-Hasan Siddiqui), Karachi, 1971, text, p. 79.

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834794
Akbar’s religious policy in the early phase of his reign: A complex story / 71
Akbar ‘for giving preference to Hindus over Muslims as if he were a Hindu

himself’.4 While citing these statements from Aziz Ahmad, Raghavan remarks: ‘it
is also possible that the ghazal is not authentic’ and points out that the date of its
composition (before 1560) was at a time when Akbar had not yet ‘embarked on
the Rajput alliance or exhibited any sign of religious eclecticism or liberalism’.5
It is, indeed, possible that these lines, as suggested by Raghavan, are not a part of
the original compilation. The possibility of these lines being interpolated at a later
stage by a copyist, although unlikely, the verse being in Turki, cannot be entirely
ruled out. The more likely explanation is that the verse does not refer to anything
done by Akbar at all, no marriage of whom to a Hindu princess is known to us
from Bairam Khān’s lifetime. Rather, it seems to touch on a marriage between a
Muslim and Hindu as unnatural—opposed, as it says, to both Muslim and Hindu
culture. The word jāgīr, not yet in common use during Bairam Khān’s time,6 should
rather be read as chākar (servant), an old Turki word (surviving in Hindustani in
the phrase naukar-chākar). In any case, a close analysis of the verse reveals that
it is of no relevance to Akbar’s relations with Hindus.
Regarding Moosvi’s critique of my study of the religious policy of Akbar,
I have tried to emphasise in my present article that the abortive attempt to reimpose
jizya in 1574 was only one reflection of Akbar’s attempt at placating orthodox
Islamic sentiment, it was also being reflected in his measures against Shi‘ite and
Mahdavīs in the 1560s and early 1570s. His allowing, on Shaik̲h̲ ‘Abdu’l Nabī’s
suggestion, the removal of the dead body of a widely respected Shi‘a divine, Mīr
Murtazā Shīrāzī, from the proximity of Amīr Khusaru’s tomb (in 1566), on the
plea that a ‘heretic’ could not be allowed to remain interred so close to the grave
of a Sunni dignitary was obviously aimed at placating sectarian sentiment among
Sunni Turanis and Indian Muslims.7
Such an anti-Shi‘a bias may also be detected in the articulation of the official
version of political developments during this time. For example, in 1567, Qāsim
Arsalān, the court poet, is reported to have celebrated the death of Uzbek rebels,
‘Alī Qulī Khān and Bahādur Khān, by composing a couplet where they are called
not only namak-harām (disloyal) but also bedīn (apostates).8 The last epithet is an
obviously hostile reference to their Shi‘ite leanings.
Such anxiety, on Akbar’s own part, or, may be, on the part of persons allowed
to articulate state policy to placate Sunni orthodoxy, which seems to have persisted
4
A. Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in Indian Environment, New Delhi, 1963, reprint 1999, p. 176.
5
T.C.A. Raghavan, Attendant Lords, Bairam Khan and Abdur Rahim, Courtiers and Poets in Mughal
India, Noida, 2017, p. 58.
6
Cf. I. Habib, ed., ‘Three Early Farmans of Akbar’, in idem (ed.), Akbar and his India, Delhi, 1997,
p. 272; and my article, ‘The Mughal Assignment System During Akbar’s Early Years, 1556–75’, in
I.A. Khan, op. cit, p. 24.
7
‘Abdul Qādir Badāūnī, Muntakhabut Tawārīkh, ed. Ali, Ahmad and Lees, Bib. Ind., Calcutta,
1864–69, Vol. II, p. 99.
8
Ibid., p. 98.

72 / Iqtidar Alam Khan
down in the early 1570s. On the eve of the Gujarat campaign in 1572, he is reported
to have proclaimed that the subjugation of the territory was necessary for punishing
Afghan converts to Mahdavism reportedly tyrannising over orthodox Muslims there.9
According to Ghaus̤ī Shat̤ t̤ ārī, the Bohra divine, Shaikh Muḥammad Nahrwāla had
taken a vow not to put on a turban as long as the Mahdavī heresy was not eradicated
from amongst the Bohra community. On reaching Naharwāla, Akbar is reported to
have promised Shaikh Muḥammad that he would support his cause and so made
him put on a turban, though nothing in fact was done to make good his promise.10
In this context, it is worth remembering that the state policy in the years following
Bairam Khan’s dismissal (1560) was considerably influenced by Shaikh ‘Abdu’l
Nabī11 and other men belonging to Indian Shaikhzāda families who were known
for their religious bigotry and hostility towards Hindu chiefs. Evidently, this state
of mind on the part of an influential segment of Muslim elite of North India had
been persisting since the closing decades of the Sharqi rule.
A passage in Badāūnī’s Najātu’l Rashīd, for instance, seems to suggest that there
survived a vocal body of opinion among the ulamā from the fifteenth century
holding that the Hindu chiefs needed to be suppressed not only for their refusal to
pay kharāj-o-jizya (land-tax and poll-tax) but also for making hostile comments
about Islamic faith and its followers. It is true that there was also present a
contrary opinion among Muslims. For example, Qutlaq Khān, the wazīr of the
Sharqi Sultan, opposed the suggestion that a crusade be launched against Hindus.
But he was overruled at an assemblage of scholars by the majority led by a certain
Qāzī A‘z̤am. The latter is reported to have recorded the proceedings of one such
discussion in a book titled Risāla-i ‘Azmīa. Badāūnī claims to have possessed a
copy of that book and records his agreement with the course of action suggested in
it.12 One may imagine that this orthodox tendency in Sunni Islam would be equally
intolerant towards sects such as Shias and Mahadavis.
The state policy under Akbar from 1560 onwards, roughly down to 1575, had
thus often to accommodate the prejudices of theologians, commanding much
influence among Muslims. They often goaded him to be harsh and sectarian
towards nonbelievers as well as the so-called heretics. According to Badauni, this
phase also witnessed Akbar’s lavishing much favour on the theologians in the form
of land grants on an unprecedented scale.13 A majority of persons benefiting from
this flood of favours would obviously be Indian Muslims managing mosques and
dargāhs (mystic hospices) in different places. One may even speculate that this
attitude of placating the a’imma (functionaries of Islamic religious institutions)
was partly aimed at weaning them away from the influence of Afghan chiefs who
9
Nafā’īsu’l Ma’ās̤ ir, MS. Br. Library, 62a and b ff.
10
Cf. Muḥammad Ghaus̤ ī Shat̤ t̤ ārī, Gulzār-i Abrār, ed. M. Zaki, Patna, 1994, pp. 296–97.
11
Badāūnī, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 79–80.
12
Badāūnī, Najātu’l Rashīd, ed. S. Moinul Haq, Lahore, 1972, p. 240.
13
Badāūnī, Muntakhabut Tawārīkh, Vol. III, p. 80.

until late years were their rulers. They were evidently regarded by Mughals during
these years as their main potential opponents among the notables or ashrāf among
the Muslim population.
During the mid-1570s the cultural milieu of the Mughal state power continued to
be coloured by religious bigotry is indicated by Badāūnī’s report of the behaviour of
Mughal soldiers commanded by Birbal during the siege of Kangra (980/1572–73).14
They are reported to have killed cows herded together within the main temple
and desecrated its sacred precincts. This kind of behaviour would surely have
invited a harsh reprimand by Akbar in the post-1579 phase; yet, as late as 1573,
even a highly placed Hindu noble like Birbal did not feel confident enough to take
measures for preventing such display of bigotry by soldiers under his command.
As noted earlier, Akbar’s financial patronage extended to the aimma during
Shaik̲ h̲ ‘Abdu’l Nabīs tenure as ṣadr in the form of land grants was unprece-
dented. Evidently, matters like the story of Akbar’s birth in the house of a Rajput
chieftain mentioned by Shireen Moosvi15 did not carry much weight with him
during these years. His foremost anxiety then was to create a support base for the
Mughal state in the reconquered territories of North India and to ensure that
the remaining pockets of Afghan resistance were eliminated as early as possible.
The experience from 1562 to 1568 had shown that the Rajput chiefs who mattered
were not amenable to gestures like abolition of jizya (1562) or Akbar’s marriage
with a princess belonging to the Kachwaha clan (then a relatively minor Rajput
ruling family).
It is true that, as brought out by Ahsan Raza Khan, by 1566, Akbar had already
adopted the Hindu practice of toladān. Many chiefs of the Punjab reportedly
came to pay homage and make offerings to him, on the occasion of his observing
toladān at Lahore in 1566.16 But evidently, the chiefs mentioned in this context
were the zamindars of north-western Punjab. They obviously did not command
prestige and political clout as compared to the Rajput chieftains of Mewar, Mar-
war and Bikaner whom evidently Akbar was particularly eager to win over or
reduce to submission around this time. Extra aggressive language of the Fatḥnāma
of Chittor (1568) where Akbar is made to express his zeal to destroy temples,
may thus be attributed, besides the draftsman’s tendency to copy the language of
similar documents of the past, to the frustration of the Mughal court over its lack
of success until then in forming an alliance with Rajput chieftains on its own terms.
An oral tradition current among the Mughal ruling circles during the first half of
the seventeenth century was to the effect that such an alliance had already been
suggested by Shah Tahmasp to Humāyūn.17
14
Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 161–62.
15
Moosvi, op. cit., p. 47.
16
A.R. Khan, ‘Akbar and the Chiefs’, in Akbar and His India, ed. I. Habib, New Delhi, 1997, p. 4.
17
Cf. Farīd Bhakkarī, Ẓakhīratul Khawānīn, ed., Moin ul Haq, Karachi, 1961, Vol. I, pp. 103–04.

Evidence about Akbar’s personal beliefs, social predilections or preferences

during this period is admittedly problematic. On the one hand, sometimes in his
eagerness to show utmost respect to the Sunni divines at the court, he would go
to the extreme of making a gesture of helping one of them remove his shoes.18
As indicated by the cases cited earlier, he was often prone to allow them to persecute
individuals accused of holding heretical beliefs. But regarding non-Muslim subjects
in general, Akbar appears to have adhered, down to 1575, to norms evolved during
the preceding centuries of Turkish and Afghan rule when ordinarily the state
authorities maintained an attitude of indifferent tolerance towards Hindu religious
institutions. These were ordinarily allowed to be maintained by Hindu local
authorities or priestly managements according to rules and conventions set by the
Brahmin priests.19 It is true that Akbar did go further: the documents preserved by
the Goswamīs of Vrindavan show that by his farman issued as early as 8 January
1565, a grant of 200 bīghas of tax-fee land (in‘ām) was conferred on Gopāl Dās,
priest at the Madan Mohan temple at Vrindavan. On 6 October 1568 by another
farmān, issued at the recommendation of Todar Mal, Akbar entrusted the manage-
ment of the Madan Mohan and Govind Dev temples of Vrindavan to the famous
Chitanya divine Jīv Goswami.20 Indeed, Akbar was now ready, simultaneously
with his willingness to favour Muslim orthodoxy, to play the arbiter in Hindu
religious matters as well. The attitude that Akbar had in this respect during the late
1560s was illustrated by the manner in which he was reported to have handled a
dispute between two groups of Hindu mendicants (sanyāsis) namely, Pūrīs and
Kūrs, over a particular spot in the vicinity of the main temple at Kurukshetra. In the
12th R.Y. (beginning 11 March 1567), while the royal camp was passing through
Ambala, the matter was brought to Akbar’s notice by the representatives of the
two groups with a request that he might act as a sort of referee during a fight they
planned to have for settling the dispute. Though Akbar judged the claim of the Pūrīs
as being more in accordance with the established tradition, he refrained from giving
a verdict, allowing the two groups to settle the matter by having the customary
fight. However, to ensure that the Pūrīs were not overwhelmed by the numerically
stronger Kūrs, he directed some of his own servants, disguised as Pūrīs, to join the
fight so that the judgement that he finally gave in favour of Pūrīs remained consistent
with customary rules governing the affairs of this pilgrim centre.21
18
Badāūnī, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 80.
19
Such an attitude on the part of Delhi Sultans implied a recognition of Hindu subjects as zimmīs.
This is evidenced by the use of the phrase kharāj-o-jizya for the land tax and poll tax, both of
which could only be levied on zimmīs. Cf. I. Habib, ‘Land Tax and Other Rural Taxes’, in Irfan Habib
et al., Economic History of Medieval India, 1200–1500, Delhi, 2011, p. 50.
20
Cf. T. Mukherjee and I. Habib, ‘Akbar and the Temples of Mathura and Its Environs’, PIHC 48th
session, Goa (1987), pp. 235–36.
21
Akbar-nāma, Vol. II, ed. ‘Ahmad Ali and ‘Abdur Rahim, Calcutta, 1873–97, p. 287. Cf. S.P. Verma,
‘Paintings Under Akbar as Narrative Art’, in Akbar and His India, ed. I. Habib, Delhi, 1997, pp. 158,

By agreeing to settle a dispute among two groups of Hindu mendicants with

reference to a patently pagan tradition, Akbar here dramatically deviated from
the position he would be expected to take as an orthodox Muslim ruler, especially
in the Naqshbandī tradition.22 As a matter of fact, a closer examination of the
evidence that we have on Akbar’s conduct in his private life, as well as in his
capacity as sovereign head of the Timurid state in India, during the 1560s and early
1570s, shows that in this early phase of his reign there persisted a palpable tension
between his formal commitment to orthodox Islamic doctrines and the novel ideas
and tastes that he was acquiring as a sovereign whose interests were best served
by incorporating Hindu ruling groups within the state apparatus.
The state policy that unfolded from 1560 onwards under Akbar’s direct rule for
about 15 years often seems to reflect tensions and uncertainties of this situation.
On the one hand, it was seemingly influenced by the orthodox Islamic tendency
represented by Naqshbandī sufic order which is reported to have become influential
at Akbar’s court during the early years of his reign. But these very years also
witnessed a slow unfolding of his innate attitude of respect for the sentiments of
women he came into contact with. An early manifestation of this trait after his rise
to the throne was his going to Māham Anaga personally to inform her about the
execution of her son, Adham Khān; he appeared to be offering an explanation to
the old lady for an action taken in his capacity as the sovereign.23 The regard paid
to Maham Anaga, mother of the murderer, was in sharp contrast to what happened
with other executions. Kāmrān’s son put to death in captivity after Akbar’s accession
was never even mentioned in any official records.24 But in the case of Adham Khan,
a grand tomb was allowed to be built close to the semi-sanctified premises of the
Qubbat ul-Islam mosque in Mehrauli.
This tendency of Akbar to be influenced by women with whom he came into
close contact with appears to have brought about a gradual shift in his overall atti-
tude in matters relating to religious taboos. During the early 1860s, Akbar allowed
himself to become instrumental in the drive of orthodox ‘ulamā to sideline the
so-called heretics, on the one hand, while Akbar’s experience, of having in his
harem Hindu wives who evidently were not really converted even after joining
the royal household, was of considerable significance in influencing his views, on
the other. As early as 1562–64, Rafīuddīn Shīrāzī, then at Agra, attributed Akbar’s
168, where paintings depicting this episode in Tārikh-i Khāndān-i Timūrya, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental
Public Library, Patna, MS. p. 322, and Akbar-nāma, MS, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, No.
61/117, are reproduced.
22
Commenting on the career of Shaikh Mubārak, Badāūnī (iii/74) observes: ‘In the beginning of the
rule of the emperor (Akbar), as the faction of the naqshbandīs was in a dominant position, he (Mubārak)
decided to join the same (sufic) order’.
23
Bayāt, Tazkira-i Humāyūn o Akbar, ed. M.H. Husain, Calcutta, 1941, pp. 251–52. The
passage has been translated by S. Moosvi, Episodes in the Life of Akbar, New Delhi, 1994, pp. 32–34.
24
See for a biography of Mirzā Kāmrān’s son, Mirzā Abu’l Qāsim, my Mirza Kamran: A Biography,
Bombay, 1964, pp. 54–56.

prohibition of slave trade to the influence of a Brahman mistress.25 In 1577, when

‘Shaikh ‘Abdu’l Nabī executed a Brahman of Mathura for blasphemy, Akbar’s
annoyance upon this action was said to have been enflamed by his Rajput wives
protesting that the mullahs were getting out of hand.26 Such harem influence was
obviously behind Akbar’s occasional participation in Hindu rituals that must have
been observed by some of his non-Muslim wives, during the 1560s.27 Again, we
know on the authority of a seventeenth-century chronicler that during this phase,
Akbar would sometimes put on a saffron dress, which made Shaik̲h̲ ‘Abdu’l Nabī
so indignant that he threw his staff at him.28 Akbar’s abolition of jizya in 1564
again appears to be a development of the same nature. It ostensibly did not reflect
his considered world view but was possibly dictated partly by his anxiety to win
the cooperation of the Rajput chiefs. Again, it is possible that the influence of his
Hindu wives was also at work in inducing Akbar to remove the discriminatory
tax. Akbar was persuaded to reimpose the jizya in the early 1570s, which goes to
show that the abolition of jizya in 1564 had not been a final decree, and, given the
existence of contrary influences could be reimposed.
No doubt Akbar during the 1560s and early 1570s, aimed at securing the support of
Rajput chiefs as well as to co-opt in his administration newly risen Persian-knowing
Hindu managerial personnel proficient in managing state finances since the time of
Afghan rule. By 1566–67, Todar Mal, a distinguished representative of this class, had
already risen to the position of a premier state functionary.29 In 1571, while visiting
Banaras for taking a ceremonial bath, Todar Mal entertained a complaint by local
Hindus against Bāyazīd, the shiqdar of that place, accusing him of converting the
site of an old temple into a mosque-cum-school (madrasa). Todar Mal asked
the complainants to represent the matter before Mun‘im Khān, then administering
the eastern sarkārs from his headquarters at Jaunpur. Subsequently, Bāyazīd was
called to Jaunpur for explaining his side of the matter, but no further action was
taken. Later, Akbar made a grant for meeting the expenses of the madrasa.30
Bayazid’s, testimony on this episode, thus shows that in its basic orientation, the
state policy with regard to non-Muslim subjects under Akbar during this phase was
not much different from what it would have been under his Afghan predecessors.
But the presence of Todar Mal as an influential state functionary made a difference
in so far as, henceforth, there would be present in the central government someone
who gave a sympathetic hearing to complaints of Hindu subjects against the
25
Rafīuddīn Shīrāzī. Tazkiratu’l Mulūk, Br. Lib. Add 23, 863, 107b ff., 195b.
26
Badāūnī, Muntakhabut Tawarīkh, Vol. III, p. 81.
27
Ibid., Vol. II, p. 261.
28
Bhakkarī, op. cit., pp. 69–70.
29
See Abu’l Faẓl, Akbarnāma, Bib. Ind., Vol. II, p. 270.
30
Bayāt, Tārīkh-i Humāyūn o Akbar (1567), pp. 211–12. The passage is quoted and discussed in P.
Prasad, Sanskrit Inscriptions of Delhi Sultanate, 1191–1526, Delhi, 1990, p. 150, the inscription from
the temple having been taken to Jaunpur and put in the Lal Darwaza mosque. See also H. Mukhia,
The Mughals of India, New Delhi, 2004, p. 23.

highhanded attitude of individual state functionaries. It is interesting to note that

almost contemporaneous with Akbar’s reimposition of the jizya, a farmān of Akbar
issued in 1575, carried a seal of Todarmal, reading ‘Rāja Todar Mal, slave of the
Court under Protection of Rām’, and this open avowal of Hindu faith apparently
aroused no objection at the court.31
I seek to end this note without going into too many details with the remark
that Shireen Moosvi’s scholarly comments on my article of 1970 have persuaded
me to reconsider my presentation in that article in one particular respect. My
comments speculating on the response of Indian Muslims to various measures
and developments during the early part of Akbar’s reign sometimes might have
tended to create an impression that all of them were always prone to be placated
by a sectarian attitude towards Hindus as well as non-orthodox Muslims. I should
make it clear that this was not my assumption at all. Let us not forget that the set
of persons Badāūnī bitterly denounces for ‘misleading’ Akbar later on included
Shaikh Mubarak and his sons who would always be counted among the most
distinguished Indian Muslim intellectuals of the sixteenth century. Again, Shireen
Moosvi’s comments persuaded me to concede that the language of my observations
on Akbar’s early measures at times become one-sided. It is perhaps not fully valid
to assert that abolition of pilgrimage tax in 1562 and of jizya in 1564 were entirely
the outcome of the exigencies of the situation and that no element of religious
tolerance or intellectual influence was at work. Her reference to the grant made
to Chaitanya priests of Vrindavan in 1565 is naturally very pertinent here. I wish
Vrindavan documents to be published by T. Mukherjee and Irfan Habib in 1987,
had been known to me in 1968!
I would like to end this note with a reference to Akbar’s sayings listed by Abul
Fazl in Ā’īn-i Akbarī where we find Akbar admitting almost mournfully that in the
early years of his reign, he was responsible for forcing people to convert to Islam.
The tenor of this saying makes one wonder how a medieval monarch should have
the moral courage not only to make such a confession but also to express his deep
regret at behaving in this manner. The saying I am referring to here is not usually
reproduced by Akbar’s admirers possibly owing to their tendency to focus on the
phase of his life after 1579 when he began preaching and practising the famous
principle of sulh-i kul (absolute peace). This saying is not cited by his Hindutva
denigrators as well because any ordinary student of history would not fail to read
in it a message reminiscent of humanity and truthfulness at the level of Mahatma
Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth. The saying I refer to reads:
Earlier I did force men to convert to my faith. I used to regard that a sign of
being a Muslim. As I gained awareness, I was ashamed. I myself was not a
(true) Muslim, but was forcing others to convert and considered this attitude
religiousness (dīndārī).32
I owe information on this seal to Moosvi, ‘Akbar’s Enterprise of Religious Conciliation’, pp. 49–50.
31
Abu’l Faẓl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, litho., Nawal Kishore, Lucknow, 1310 H, p. 181, saying number 56.
32

Survey
Vijayanagara in modern
historiography: A survey
Nagendra Rao
What Sewell called the ‘Forgotten Empire’ once unified the larger part of South India, governing
it from Vijayanagara for over 200 years. Once modern methods of research took root, the effort
began to reconstruct its history. British historians saw in it a predecessor—an imperfect, but
predecessor all the same. Indian historians tended to see in it good evidence of Indian capacity
for military enterprise and efficient administration. Since Independence, the trend has continued,
with Burton Stein on one side and T.V. Mahanlingam, on the other side. But a more objective
trend is also noticeable now, in the work of Y. Subbarayalu and N. Karashima.
Keywords: historiography, orientalism, nationalism, Vijayanagara
Einführung
The Vijayanagara Empire was studied during the British rule by a series of histori-
ans including Mark Wilks, Robert Sewell, Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Suryanarayana
Row, N. Venkataramanayya, Srikantayya and B.A. Saletore. They unravelled its
political and cultural history, and economic and social institutions, by exploring
its inscriptions, and different kinds of texts in various languages. The credit goes
to the early British administrators for making the earliest effort at reconstructing
Vijayanagara’s history. They were generally interested in tracing the history of the
rulers who were their precursors and in discovering how their current subjects were
governed under earlier rulers.
Indian historians studied Vijayanagara partly from a nationalist point of view
and partly concentrating on different regions such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh
and Tamil Nadu, which composed the territory of the Vijayanagara Empire. They
took pride in the simple fact that there had arisen a large empire like Vijayanagara
in the past, while they greatly enlarged the store of sources of information about
it such as inscriptions and texts in indigenous languages.
Colonial Historiography
The theory of Orientalism has been recently used to assess much of European
historiography on Asia, including India.1 It is not, of course, easy to generalise
1
The main text in which an extensive range of English and French writing on the Islamic
world and India is investigated is Edward Said, Orientalism, Indian Reprint, New Delhi, 2015.

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834796
Vijayanagara in modern historiography / 79
about Orientalist scholarship. One category of scholars did criticise Indians in

order to justify the dogma of White supremacy. However, another set of scholars
wrote sympathetically about the subject population. Trautmann refers to ‘Indo
Phobia’ and ‘Indo Mania’ to distinguish the two trends.2 There is another approach
which has been styled ‘Beyond Orientalism’, and which argues against holding
all European writings on Asia to be classified under any one category.3 A similar
position can be adopted concerning Indian historians, in relation to their nationalist
bias, when one attempts to deal with the wide range of their writings.
Yet, classifications are not to be shunned. Burton Stein in his study of
Vijayanagara historiography has argued that the British had a motive when they
studied the history of the natives because knowledge was essential as a lever to
better control their subjects. The British had one unspoken cause to pursue, that is,
to suggest that their rule was essential since their subjects had failed to administer
themselves well in the past.4
Among the British historians, one may mention W.W. Hunter5 and Vincent Smith6
for India as a whole, and Mark Wilks,7 H.H. Wilson8 and Robert Sewell9 especially
for South India. Hunter stated that Vijayanagara was the most important Hindu
empire that emerged after the twelfth century. The term Hindu, in this context, is
important. He attempted to differentiate between Hindu and Muslim dynasties.10
It was argued that in north India, there was Muslim domination, while in the
south, the Hindus still remained predominant. Mark Wilks considered both Hindu
and Muslim kings of the Deccan to have been despotic.11 On the other hand, H.H.
Wilson presented a less partisan sketch of the history of Vijayanagara including
its foundation and expansion.12
Some British historians tended to find fundamental differences between
Muslim and Hindu kingdoms. According to Gribble, the Hindu kingdoms produced
He has, however, been criticised for being too sweeping in his judgement and inaccuracy
in regard to individual scholars’ opinions.
2
T.R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 62–9.
3
This is the position of Rahul Sapra, Limits of Orientalism: Seventeenth Century
Representations of India, MD, 2011.
4
Burton Stein, The New Cambridge History of India: Vijayanagara, Cambridge, 1989, p. 3.
5
W.W. Hunter, The Imperial Gazetteer of India, London, 1881.
6
Vincent Smith, The Early History of India, New Delhi, 1999.
7
Mark Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India, in an Attempt to Trace the
History of Mysore, London, 1810.
8
H .H. Wilson, The Mackenzie Collection. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental
Manuscripts, and Other Articles Illustrative of the Literature, History, Statistics and
Antiquities of South India, collected by the late Lieut. Col. Colin Mackenzie, 2nd ed., Calcutta, 1828.
9
Robert Sewell. A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar, a Contribution to the History of
India, London, 1900, reprint: 1992. This is to be distinguished from the reprint published by Publication
Division, Government of India, Delhi, 1962, which has a different numbering of pages.
10
Hunter, op. cit., p. 138.
11
Wilks, op. cit., p. 1.
12
Wilson, op. cit.

80 / Nagendra Rao
agricultural and other commodities, and they were capable of amassing a huge
amount of wealth within short periods, while the Muslims depended on plunder
and expropriation and did not believe in the development of their regions through
patronising agriculture.13
Mark Wilks discussed the origin and expansion of the Vijayanagara Empire.
He was an administrator and so naturally concerned himself especially with issues
that concerned past administrations. His main source for this study was the set
of literary works found in the Mackenzie collection. One cannot criticise Wilks
for the selection of the sources, as a large number of epigraphic records were not
yet available during his time.14 He traced the prevalence of despotism to religion.
He believed that adherence to religious values compelled the people to subject
themselves to absolute control by the king, since owing to their beliefs, oriental
people did not have the concept of civil liberty, an important feature of Western
society.15
Wilks presented a sketch of the dynasties of South India including Kannada,
Telugu and Tamil regions. He was aware of the geographical and linguistic divisions
of the Deccan. However, his main contribution lay in the field of the nature of land
administration in South India. He stated that the King was the owner of the soil
and did not recognise the zamindars as land owners.16 Yet, he did find references
to claimants other than the King to rights over land such as village communities
and peasant proprietors.17 With reference to Vijayanagara, he argued that the state
increased the burden of the tax demand, possibly from 10 to 20 per cent of the
gross produce.18
Robert Sewell was also an administrator, and his book on Vijayanagara was
famously titled ‘A Forgotten Empire’.19 His main sources were inscriptions,
literature and more prominently, the Portuguese chronicles of Domingo Paes and
Fernao Nuniz. In addition, he depended on Firishta, who wrote the history of India
in Persian in the early seventeenth century. He used translations of the Portuguese
sources available in the work of David Lopes.20 The splendour of Vijayanagara
was evident from the study of the Portuguese sources. Based on these works, he
considered Vijayanagara to have been the Venice of India. He believed that a certain
13
J.D.B. Gribble, A History of the Deccan, Vol. I, London, 1896, p. 27.
14
On Mark Wilks see V. Raghottam, ‘Soldier, Diplomat, Historian: Mark Wilks and the Represen-
tations of the Empire in the Early Nineteenth Century’, International Journal of South Asian Studies
2(1) 2009, pp. 1–13.
15
Wilks, op. cit., p. 22.
16
Ibid., p. 116.
17
Ibid., p. 125.
18
Ibid., p. 154.
19
M aking use of this title, S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar published a booklet, The Yet-
remembered Ruler of a Long-forgotten Empire: Krishnadeva Raya of Vijayanagara,
Allahabad, 1917 (reprinted from Hindustan Review, 1917).
20
Sewell, op. cit., pp. 279–376.

amount of modernity (‘transition from the Old to the New’) was involved in South
India with the rise of the Vijayanagara Empire.21
Sewell underlined the depth of conflict between the Hindu and the Muslim kings
in his writing as follows:
Without laying too much stress on conquests by force of arms, it seems certain
that most if not all Southern India submitted to his (the Vijayanagara emperor’s)
rule, probably only too anxious to secure a continuance of Hindu domination in
preference to the despotism of the hated followers of Islam.22
The argument of Sewell is that the ‘Hindu’ chiefs preferred a strong Hindu kingdom
that could resist Muslim domination. In this context, one can note the attempt of
the British historians to emphasise the unremitting nature of differences between
Hindus and Muslims.
It is apparent that Sewell was impressed by the size of the Vijayanagara Empire,
for he makes the following statement:
Its rulers, however, in their day swayed the destinies of an empire far larger
than Austria, and the city is declared by a succession of European visitors
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to have been marvellous for size and
prosperity—a city with which for richness and magnificence no known western
capital could compare. Its importance is shown by the fact that almost all
struggles of the Portuguese on the western coast were carried for the purpose
of securing its maritime trade ….23
Interestingly, the rise and fall of the Portuguese are related by Sewell to the
changing fortunes of Vijayanagara. In addition, he refers to the maritime trade of
this kingdom, thereby showing that it controlled not only agriculture and irrigational
activities but also had maritime ambitions.
Indeed, Sewell initiated a tradition of historical research in South India
by studying inscriptions and other sources. Although the larger portion of his
work concerned political history, he devoted one chapter to the monuments and
irrigation works undertaken by Krishṇadeva Rāya. Details about society were
extracted from the works of Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz. Later, scholars built
on this tradition as they explored new sources and published them.24
21
Ibid.
22
Sewell, op. cit., reprint: 1992, p. 27.
23
Ibid., p. 2.
24
Translations of several texts are contained in, Vasundhara Filliozat, ed., Vijayanagar, New Delhi,
revised edition, 1999.

82 / Nagendra Rao
Nationalist Historiography
Indian historians, influenced by the spirit of nationalism, took to writing the

history of Vijayanagara Empire, as an important Indian achievement and made
significant contributions to the subject. Krishnaswami Aiyangar published Sources
of Vijayanagara History.25 This work mainly drew from Telugu literature. He was
thus able to add information that Swell had missed having depended only on
Portuguese sources. This was the case, for example, with Krishnadeva Raya’s
Orissa campaign. Aiyangar suggested that the indigenous text Parijatabharanam
provides information regarding the capture of Shivasamudram.26
Suryanarayana Row took issue with Sewell’s reference to Vijayanagara as a
‘forgotten’ empire, by titling his own work as ‘Never to be Forgotten Empire’.27
Though his work was devoted to the dynastic history of Vijayanagara, he also
attempted to glorify India. He argued that the Hindus had a sense of history and
countered the argument of western scholars that Indians did not preserve historical
records, by giving a list of inscriptions on the basis of which the history of India
could be recovered.28 He discussed the history of ancient India from the Mauryan
period, but concentrated on the political history of South India. He used a variety
of sources such as traditions including the vamsavalis (genealogies), inscriptions
and accounts in Persian and European languages.
N. Venkataramanayya initiated the tradition of detailed research in different
aspects of the political history and other aspects of life under Vijayanagara by
his Studies in Third Dynasty of Vijayanagara, Madras, 1935. In a later work,
he discussed the relations between the Vijayanagara and the Muslim kingdoms.
He made a comparative analysis of Firistha and some other texts such as
Vidyaranya Vrittanta and Kalajnana. Based on these sources, he traced the process
of foundation of the Vijayanagara Empire.29 He used a large number of Persian
sources to trace political developments in South India in the medieval period.
A major weakness of the Delhi Sultanate, according to him, was the lack of
control of the king over the provincial governors who resisted the demands for larger
payments of revenue collection by the central government. Further, the distribution
of iqta‘s (land assignments) based on higher bids led to conflicts among the Muslim
military leaders.30 Discussing the revolt of the South Indian kingdoms against the
Delhi Sultanate, he argued that the cause lay in the interference by the rulers in the
25
S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Sources of Vijayanagar History, Madras, 1919, reprint: New Delhi,
2003.
26
Ibid., p. 11.
27
B. Suryanarain Row, A History of Vijayanagar: The Never to be Forgotten Empire, Part I, Madras,
1905, reprint: New Delhi, 1993.
28
Ibid., p. 90.
29
N. Venkataramanayya, The Early Muslim Expansion in South India, Madras, 1942, p. 186.
30
Ibid., p. 161.

religious and social life of the people and denied the role of political factors in this
development.31 Venkataramanayya also described in detail the political situation
that prevailed in the Deccan during the fourteenth century preceding the emergence
of the Vijayanagara Empire.
In 1930, S. Srikantayya, a Kannada historian, wrote on the early years of
Vijayanagara. His writings exhibit a few features of the nationalist writings like
comparing Vijayanagara with the largest empires of the world.32 He wrote as follows:
the Vijayanagara Emperors ruled over a country far larger than Austria and their
capital was incomparable for wealth and magnificence. The trade of the Empire
was sought after and coveted by the leading nations of the world and there are
accounts left by ambassadors and travellers to the Court of Vijayanagara which
are of surprising interest.33
Srikantayya entered into a debate with Fr. Henry Heras who had argued that the
inscriptions describing the connection between Shringeri, a Shaiva religious
centre of Karnataka, and Vijayanagara were spurious. Srikantayya argued that the
Shringeri Gurus should not be disbelieved on the matter, as they are not likely to
have tampered with the records describing the relationship between the Shringeri
matha and the Vijayanagara court.34
According to him, Vijayanagara was established to fight against the Muslim
invasion but he differentiates between the Delhi Sultanate and the Shia rulers
of the Deccan. Srikantayya’s argument is that after the Bahmanid Sultanate was
established in the Deccan, the Delhi Sultans sought the assistance of Vijayanagara
kings to neutralise the Bahmanis.35 Srikantayya is quite objective in some
matters, for example, when he brushes aside the myth regarding the foundation of
the Vijayanagara Empire. He claims that this town existed even before the formation
of this Empire and quotes several authorities to show that as early as the tenth
century, there was a large settlement in this area. The sage Vidyaranya, according
to Srikantayya, revived the ancient glory of this place by encouraging Harihara to
establish his kingdom with Hampi as the capital.36
Srikantayya made a significant contribution to the study of Vijayanagara history
by suggesting the need to look for the pre-Vijayanagara remains to make it possible
to go beyond the myth concerning the foundation of this kingdom. He differenti-
ated between different categories of Muslims but believed in the Hindu–Muslim
31
Ibid., p. 163.
32
S. Srikantayya, ‘Foundation of the Vijayanagara Empire and Vidyaranya’s Part Therein’, p. 187.
Retrieved from http://www.southasiaarchive.com/Content/sarf.120045/206806/005
33
Ibid., p. 187.
34
Ibid., pp. 189–90.
35
Ibid., p. 188.
36
Ibid., pp. 220–21.

84 / Nagendra Rao
dichotomy, even though, as he recognised, the Hindus continued to flourish under

the Delhi Sultanate and the Bahamanis.
B.A. Saletore in tracing the origins of Vijayanagara stressed the Kannada
connection. The Vijayanagara kings are represented as continuing the Hoysala
tradition. He identified Harihara with Hariyappa.37 Saletore’s work comprises
sections such as revenue administration, administration of the central government
and local government. The most interesting part of this work is the section on
‘Foreign Relations—Hindu-Muhammadan Amity’.38 For him, the relationship
between Hindus and Muslims was a very important element of the situation. A merit
of Saletore’s work is that it uses a large number of sources including inscriptions,
traditions and European works.
A major contribution of Saletore lies in the field of revenue administration.
He compared the pre-Vijayanagara and the Vijayanagara taxation systems.
According to him, Vijayanagara administration, particularly in Karnataka, continued
the policies of the Hoysalas. He also studied important aspects of the economy of
the time such as land revenue, custom duties, additional taxes, land sale and other
transactions, and land revenue administration generally. He discussed the revenue
system of the whole of Vijayanagara Empire in all three main regions. He referred
to the statement of Nuniz that the central government officials did not issue any
receipt. However, one inscription refers to the temple officials being authorised
to issue receipts to the merchants, an incidental statement, which casts doubt on
Nuniz’s assertion.39
As for taxation, the traditional sources mention one-sixth of the produce as
the general rate of taxation. However, Saletore found that Vijayanagara followed
differential rates depending on the nature of the soil. There were different rates
too for irrigated and non-irrigated lands.40 Saletore challenged the argument of
Wilks that under the Vijayanagara, the tax rate accounted for a high proportion of
the rural surplus.
Saletore exhibited considerable knowledge not only of the Kannada sources
but also of Tamil texts. To prove his arguments regarding taxation, he refers to
Chola inscriptions. He noted the need to analyse the Vijayanagara taxation system
based on a study of preceding conditions. In the case of Karnataka, for example, he
analysed the Hoysala system of taxation. It is true that in some cases, the peasants
and other taxpayers could not pay tax and so resorted to mass migration from the
high-tax regions to low-tax areas. However, Saletore defended the Vijayanagara
central government by stating that the government initiated an inquiry into such
incidents and adopted measures to redress popular grievances.41 He also questioned
37
B.A. Saletore, Social and Political Life of Vijayanagara, Vol. 1, Madras, 1934, p. 11.
38
Ibid., p. 22.
39
Ibid., p. 181.
40
Ibid., p. 192.
41
Ibid., p. 195.

the argument of Ellis that revenue was paid in kind. Saletore argued that Ellis did
not use authentic sources and he himself cited several instances where taxes were
collected in cash.42
Saletore also questioned Moreland’s suggestion that the Muslim kingdoms of
the North introduced the farming or the contract system in South India. He found
that this system prevailed in the pre-Muslim period in the regions of Karnataka and
Tamil Nadu.43 However, he agreed that absolute despotism, as described by Nuniz,
was an important feature of the Vijayanagara Empire. He argued that the kings did
have the affection of the people, citing poems in the king’s praise composed during
the Vijayanagara period.44
Saletore had access to several sources such as inscriptions and traditions.
As a professional historian, when compared with his predecessors, his attempt
was a better one at an objective history of the Vijayanagara Empire. He also
understood the need to study the economic and social history of the region. This
marks a major difference between him and earlier historians. Still, he tended to
overlook the oppressive aspects of Vijayanagara administration, and in this respect
belonged to the nationalist camp.
During the last phase of colonial rule, there was a spate of writings on the
Vijayanagara Empire, in which the nationalist impulse was again noticeably
prominent. In 1946, Nilakanta Sastri and N. Venkataramanayya published Further
Sources of Vijayanagara History, 3 vols, Madras, 1946, greatly extending the ground
covered by Krishnaswami Aiyangar’s Sources of Vijayanagara History published
in 1919. T.V. Mahalingam joined the ranks of major historians of Vijayanagara
when, in 1940, he published his Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagara,
Madras, 1940. He supplemented this with his Economic life in the Vijayanagara
Empire, Madras, 1951. All these works had this ‘nationalistic’ characteristic that
while using European sources, they also widely explored and used Indian texts.
Post-Independence Trends
The historiography of Vijayanagara has been affected by both ‘neo-orientalist’ trends

from the West and by Marxism. The Western influence has been most apparent
in the writings of Burton Stein, who, in effect, asserted that South Indian states,
including the Vijayanagara Empire, exercised only limited sovereignty in the single
person of the King. This thesis he developed in his Peasant State and Society in
Medieval South India, New Delhi, 1980, and then in his monograph exclusively
devoted to the Vijayanagara Empire (1989).45
42
Ibid., p. 202.
43
Ibid., p. 212.
44
Ibid., pp. 323–4.
45
Stein, op. cit; Stein had also written on the economy of Vijayanagara in T. Raychaudhuri and
I. Habib, ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India, Cambridge, 1982, pp. 102–4.

86 / Nagendra Rao
The Marxist trend has been reflected in the interest taken in the structure
of agrarian society in Tamil Nadu under Vijayanagara especially investigated
by Y. Subbarayalu and his Japanese collaborator Noburu Karashima. The
results of these investigations were first published in Socio-Cultural Change in
Villages in Tiruchirapalli District, Tamil Nadu, ed. N. Karashima, Tokyo,
1985, and then in N. Karashima, Towards a New Formation: South Indian
Society under Vijayanagara Rule, Delhi, 1992. Karashima also published
A Concordance of Nayakas: The Vijayanagar Inscriptions in South India, Delhi,
2002, an almost definitive work based on inscriptions, clarifying the much
debated question of the position and entitlements of Nāyakas in the Vijayanagara
Empire.
There has also been a major effort to publish primary source material on an
extensive scale. T.V. Mahalingam compiled A Topographical List of Inscriptions
Tamil Nadu and Kerala States, the three published volumes remaining confined
to the Tamil Nadu districts (pub. 1985, 1988 and 1989). S. Ritti and B.R. Gopal
have edited Inscriptions of the Vijayanagara Rulers, Vol. I (5 parts), New Delhi,
2004, and Vol. II, Bangalore, 2008.
The ground is thus hopefully being created for a more extensive and objective
study of the Vijayanagara Empire leaving behind the prejudices and concerns of
our colonial past.

Review Article
A new enterprise in Sanskrit

Lexicography
Krishna Mohan Shrimali
Patrick Olivelle, David Brick and Mark McClish, eds., A Sanskrit Dictionary of
Law and Statecraft (Delhi: Primus Books), 2015, `1,795 (Hb).
If one were to review the state of Sanskrit studies in and outside India during the last
50 years, one would immediately recognise the phenomenal body of work done by
Patrick Olivelle, currently holding the Professor’s chair in the University of Texas
at Austin, USA. Recognition of his work came pretty early in his career when he
received the A.K. Ramanujan Prize for translation (1998, for Upaniṣads) from the
Association of Asian Studies, and, earlier still, when the American Academy of
Religion’s Award for Excellence in the study of Religion in the historical category
(1994) for The Āśrama System was bestowed upon him.
The volume of Olivelle’s contributions—more than 30 monographs (including
two forthcoming) and nearly 80 research articles (excluding more than ten forth-
coming)—is awe-inspiring. His body of work, to begin with, was largely concerned
with two broad categories of Sanskrit literature: texts concerned with asceticism
and with law (dharma). While these interests continue to engage him, of late he
has been focusing also on the genre of arthaśāstra, including a richly annotated
translation of Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra (under the title King, Governance, and Law in
Ancient India, New York, 2013). His wide-ranging interests and the sheer volume
of his work apart, one admires the philological rigour, historical sensitivity and
selection of themes that mark his work. Many of his critically edited and anno-
tated texts such as the Dharmasūtras of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana and
Vasiṣṭha (2000); Mānava-Dharmaśāstra (Manu’s Code of Law, 2005); Vaiṣṇava-
Dharmaśāstra (Viṣṇu’s Code of Law, 2009) have set new benchmarks for scholars.
His promised two monographs on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, are being eagerly awaited.
It has been rightly said of him that one of his ‘driving motivations appears to be
getting “behind the texts” to explore and elucidate the sociological and ideological
world constructed by real people “on the ground”’ (Lindquist’s ‘Introduction’ in
the festshrift for him, pp.12–13).
The two associate editors of A Sanskrit Dictionary of Law and Statecraft (hence-
forth Dictionary) have been Olivelle’s students: David Brick is Senior Lecturer
in Sanskrit at the Yale University, who is currently working on a critical edition
and translation of the Dānakāṇda of Lakṣmɩ̄ dhara’s Kṛtyakalpataru, while Mark

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834797
88 / Krishna Mohan Shrimali
McClish is Assistant Professor at Birmingham-Southern University, and is due to

publish an intensive study of Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, already being projected as a
‘groundbreaking study’.
The Dictionary is focused on terms relating to ‘Law and Statecraft’. However,
let us be clear about what it is not about. As the editors’ note, their ‘dictionary
contains, with rare exceptions, only Sanskrit terms’, and they ‘have excluded the
bewildering number of terms relating to law, politics, and revenue that are found
in inscriptions’. In justification they point out that there are already lists of such
terms: Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra gives a list in Vol. III, pp. 975–1007, and a
more substantial list is found in D.C. Sircar, Indian Epigraphical Glossary, 1966
(pp. x–xi).
Such self-imposed exceptions remind us of that comprehensive Sanskrit
dictionary that has been for long under preparation at the Department of Linguistic
Studies of the Deccan College Research Institute (now a Deemed University) since
the early 1940s. In the Preface (p. v) to the first volume (1976–78) of the project,
Professor A.M. Ghatage provided essential insights about the format, objectives
and difficulties of this colossal effort in these words:
[W]ork of collecting material...went on for nearly twenty-five years.... By 1968 it

was realised that some of the features of the original project were impracticable
and difficult of speedy execution…the use of epigraphical material in detail to
ascertain the time and space context of the vocables and the listing of forms
which are deducible from the rules of Sanskrit grammar, were found to be too
cumbersome and time-consuming….
The difficulties in preparing a thematic dictionary incorporating epigraphic material,

therefore, were recognised very early. No wonder, Olivelle et al. find D.C. Sircar’s
Indian Epigraphical Glossary to be a very substantial work. This is undeniable. But
neither this work nor Kane’s earlier list of epigraphic terms annexed to his History
of Dharmaśāstra, Vol. III (both already mentioned) can be said to be exhaustive.
This reviewer has been working, almost single-handedly, on a dictionary of social,
economic and administrative terms in Indian inscriptions on historical principles
(mostly North Indian and in non-Dravidian languages) for the last many years. It is
a project of the Indian Council of Historical Research. While Sircar’s venture listed
about 7,000 terms, we have been able to compile a preliminary glossary of over
14,000 terms (still by no means exhaustive). Its publication has been pending with
the Council. Incidentally, one volume of the overall project dealing with inscriptions
in Dravidian languages and compiled by the late Dr K.V. Ramesh was published in
2012. Given one’s experience of marshalling epigraphic material with small man-
power makes one sympathetic to Olivelle and his colleagues in their self-imposed
decision to keep this large mass of material beyond the scope of their Dictionary.
The other exclusion comprises ‘technical terms from the ritual vocabulary and
from clearly religious institutions such as asceticism and penance (prāyaścitta)’.

A new enterprise in Sanskrit Lexicography / 89
Though not accounted for, it is not improbable that the decision may have been
prompted by the availability of Olivelle’s own pioneering works on these themes.
Further, from a sheer lexical point of view, this desideratum can perhaps also be
partly plugged with H.G. Ranade’s Illustrated Dictionary of Vedic Rituals, New
Delhi, 2006, which draws attention to earlier publications on the subject and their
limitations. It comprises about 5,000 entries of technical importance and also
provides illustrations in many cases.
The Dictionary produced by Olivelle and his two colleagues is a product of
more than a decade of painstaking ploughing of data from the dharmasūtras
(of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana and Vasiṣṭha), Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra,
all the mūlasmṛtis (Manu, Yājñavalkya, Viṣṇu, Nārada, Bṛhaspati, Kātyāyana,
Parāśara), vyavahāra and rājadharma sections of the commentaries and
Nibandhas and several available Sanskrit dictionaries. Indebtedness to the
Dharmakośa, the Mɩ̄māṃsā Kośa, the Śrauta Kośa and the Nyāya Kośa has also
been amply acknowledged. Some idea of the scale of data collection for this volume
can be had through a perusal of the nearly fifty and over sixty Sanskrit texts listed
under ‘Abbreviations’ and ‘Primary Sources’ respectively. The number of terms
listed in the Dictionary is approximately 3,000.
There are as many as fifty-one major topics under which the related terms are
treated. This ought not to be confused with the scheme of thematic classification,
for the basic listing of terms in this Dictionary follows the Sanskrit alphabetical
order—each entry is given in both Devanāgarɩ̄ and the Roman script. The objective
of listing ‘major topics’ seems to be to ‘provide a kind of thesaurus for significant
categories’ and guide the user towards ‘related terms’ of the base entry. It serves
the purpose of ‘cross-references’, which are otherwise quite unusual in a dictionary.
Thus under the basic entry of dāsa (‘slave’), thirty-six terms are listed ‘related to
slave’, entries for each of which can be found duly placed in alphabetical order.
While this module is commendable, space could perhaps still have been found for
a subject index—a lá Macdonell and Keith’s classic Vedic Index of Names and
Subjects. Still its two indices, that is, Sanskrit and English, are complementary
and useful for the reader.
The Dictionary usually provides one or several definitions of each term.
Examples of specific usage of each term are provided through a few ‘representa-
tive’ passages from original texts. This reminds us of the method made familiar
by the multi-volume OED (Oxford English Dictionary). Multiple meanings of
each term are indicated by bold numerals. However, the editors warn us that these
‘divisions are made only for heuristic purposes and are not in any way intended as
clear linguistic or semantic classifications’ (p. xi). There is repeated assertion, in a
somewhat apologetic tone, that given the intensive labour involved in exploring the
vast textual material and ‘enormous volume of the legal literature of India spanning
two millennia’, and that too by ‘just three individuals’, no claim for ‘exhaustive
listing’ of terms could be hazarded.

90 / Krishna Mohan Shrimali
Finally, a thought to muse on. It is recognised that the Dictionary of Olivelle

et al. has not been planned on historical principles, as was the OED and nearer home,
now the multi-volume Sanskrit dictionary being prepared by the Deccan College
(Pune). Since the reviewer has also been working on a dictionary of technical terms
in Indian inscriptions, which is modelled on the OED, one can venture to suggest
that if the editors of the Dictionary had provided temporal and spatial spread of
each term, it would have been a great boon for the user. One knows that the task
is easier said than done. Its enormity, too, is undeniable. And any attempt in that
direction would be neither exhaustive nor absolute. At best, one would only be able
to provide tentative indicators. But these would still have been of much aid to the
reader, wherever it was possible to provide them even if on a hypothetical basis.
The Sanskrit texts used by the editors span the entire range between the
Dharmasūtras and the Nibandhas. One can, therefore, assume that roughly speaking,
the chronological spectrum of the Dictionary covers over two millennia. However,
if the editors could additionally provide even approximate time span of each text
(as indeed was done by Kane in his monumental work, History of Dharmaśāstra,
Vol. I, pt. II, pp. 985–1242; Vol. II, pt. I, pp. xi–xii), it would have been a great
help for the user. The way Olivelle has already re-assessed (cf. his Dharmasūtras,
pp. 4–10) the inflated chronology of the Dharmasūtras of Āpastamba, Gautama,
Baudhāyana and Vasiṣṭha provided by Kane, it further underlines the imperatives
of keeping the user of the Dictionary informed about editors’ take on the tempo-
ral implications of citations under each term. As far as the spatial spread of each
literary text is concerned, we grant that this is still a greater challenge and little
certainty can be claimed. Yet, in view of this reviewer, an exercise in this direc-
tion would have been worth undertaking. After all, several scholars have already
worked on ‘geographies’ of varied texts of several genres in diversified linguistic
literary traditions.
No scholarly work is perfect. However, one would gladly concede that not-
withstanding some arguable ‘inadequacies’ of which the editors of the Dictionary
are ‘painfully aware’, this handsomely produced work is bound to be immensely
useful for almost all the stake holders, that is, Sanskritists, historians, and scholars
of comparative law and legal history.

Book Reviews
Tim Dyson, A Population History of India: From the First Modern People to the
Present Day (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2018, 310 pp. (Price in India
not stated.)
The author of this book is Professor of Population Studies at the London School
of Economics and so fully qualified to make the ambitious attempt to trace the
history of Indian population from the arrival of Homo sapiens down to the last
census (2011). For this purpose, Dyson has drawn on a mass of material comprising
a large amount of secondary literature, notably for the pre-census period, where
references to the demographic aspect may be only incidental. The long biblio-
graphy (pp. 281–301) shows the vast range of printed material that has been used
by Dyson to construct his narrative. In this review, we will mainly consider how he
deals with population estimates before proper national censuses began around 1871.
When statistical data are not available, one has to use other methods to obtain
quantitative results. Let us begin with the Indus Civilisation. If we can establish
roughly the size of the urban population, we can estimate the total population by
postulating roughly what percentage of the total population we can allow at the
maximum to the urban population. If we assume that the urban population could
then not have amounted to more than 10 per cent of the total, roughly the figure
in the de-industrialised India of 1881, we can now go to archaeological sites
and estimate the size of the used or built-up area of a town to deduce the size of
population. Irfan Habib estimated the populations of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa
at 85,000 and 65,000, respectively assuming a ratio of little above 400 persons
per hectare of ‘occupied area’ as disclosed by archaeology. Assuming a total
of 150,000 persons for the two cites he supposed the total urban population of the
Indus basin to amount to 250,000. Assuming the rural population then to have
been at least fifteen times the urban population in view of the primitive condi-
tions then prevailing, he put the total population of the area of Indus Civilisa-
tion at about 4 million or nearly 6 persons per square kilometre (I. Habib, Indus
Civilisation, New Delhi, 2002, pp. 22–24, 37). Dyson does not seem to take
this estimate seriously, since on page 21, n, he refuses to recognise the rate of
400 persons per square kilometre as acceptable because ‘much of the city consisted
of open places’, oblivious of the fact that one is considering only what is recognised

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834799
92 / Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 91–98
by archaeologists as occupied or built-up area, from which open spaces are excluded.
The figure of 400 per square kilometre of built-up space is not exceptionally high,
since it implies an area (floor-space) of 5 × 5 metres per head (adult or child).
The amount of 4 million for the Indus Civilisation is accepted by Dyson in a
footnote (p. 6, f. n. 7), but he forgets it in his later discussions.
In fact, Dyson seems to remain afraid of what appear to him to be high figures
for population before colonial times. Let us take the matter of population of India
in Mughal times. W.H. Moreland after a very summary view of Abu’l Fazl’s area
statistics put the population at the time of Akbar’s death (1605) at 100 million (India
at the Death of Akbar, London, 1920, p. 22). Kingsley Davis, Population of India
and Pakistan, Princeton, 1951, p. 24, by another impressionistic act, increased the
estimated population to 125 million to cover areas supposedly left out by Moreland.
In my detailed study, The Economy of the Mughal Empire, c. 1595: A Statistical
Study, 2nd ed., New Delhi, 2015, pp. 405–16, I worked out two figures for the
population of India in 1605, namely, (a) based on cultivated area, which yielded
an estimated population of 136.3–149.9 million and (b) based on land-revenue,
leading to an estimated 149.07 million. Dyson seems unduly influenced by Sumit
Guha’s excessive underestimation of the population of eastern India (Bihar and
Bengal), which then yields a population level for India, c. 1595, at 116 million
only (p. 61). He also contests the possibility that urban population in Mughal India
could be high as 15 per cent (pp. 62–65). While on page 62, Dyson refuses to take
sides between Guha’s estimate and mine, in effect, he favours Guha’s, and follows
the argument of Kingsley Davis, who rejected any idea of substantial growth of
population in pre-colonial times and assigned the real period of population growth
to India under colonial rule with all its presumed civilising benefits. In practically
identical terms, Dyson assigns the main period of population growth to the period
1821–71 (Chapter 6, esp. p. 95).
What is significant, however, is that the supposed population growth stopped just
when the regular censuses began, yielding a population rate of growth per annum
of just 0.33 per cent (see table in Dyson, p. 125). Clearly, the presumed earlier
growth in population was due to a steady improvement in enumeration rather than
actual population growth. When, with regular censuses, the stage of enumeration
improvement was over, the nominal high rate of population growth also disappeared.
This was, indeed, accepted by Morris D. Morris, a fairly consistent defender of the
Raj in his article ‘The Population of All-India, 1800–1951’, published in 1973 and
included in Dyson’s bibliography.
This simple explanation is not enough for Dyson any more than it was for King-
sley Davis. In an entire chapter ‘Famines, Plague and Influenza, c. 1871 to c. 1921’,
Dyson throws the responsibility upon natural disasters for the low rate of popula-
tion growth, though these disasters were equally present in the previous period
as well (see Irfan Habib, Indian Economy under Early British Rule, 1757–1857,
pp. 105–7, for famines during 1813–57).
Book Reviews / 93
These criticisms notwithstanding, one is deeply grateful to Dyson for his

Herculean effort. Whatever, his own conclusions (and preferences) he lays out all
the relevant material before us, and it is for us, in many cases, to make our choice
out of alternative interpretations.
Shireen Moosvi
R.N. Misra, Ascetics, Piety and Power: Śaiva Siddhānta Monastic Art in the
Woodlands of Central India (New Delhi: Aryan Books International), 2018,
xii + 219 pp., `2,400 (Hardbound).
DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834800
Professor R.N. Misra is well known for his careful studies of ancient art, artists
and artisans. The present work is not only a survey of Śaivite monastic art (mainly
sculpture and architecture) in Central India but also offers a reconstruction of the
history of Śaivite Siddhānta munīs, who controlled the monastic establishments
from about the eighth century to the twelfth. The reconstruction is almost entirely
based on inscriptions of different kinds, including the munīs’ own inscriptions and
those of rulers, as well as graffiti. In this evidence there are perhaps outlandish
claims, on one side, and lamentable gaps on the other, and so the author’s industry
in finding and deciphering some of the inscriptions and following others in diverse
publications is particularly commendable. He has also personally surveyed all
the sites that he describes in a region enclosed by the Yamuna, the Chambal, the
Narmada and the Son, with one site Chandrehe situated a little beyond the Son
river (see Map 3 on p. 44 for all the sites surveyed).
In chapters 1 and 2 the author reconstructs the cultural environment and his-
tory of the Śaivite ascetics on the basis of the sources we have mentioned above.
In chapters 3 and 4, he takes up the description and history of individual sites of
maṭhas dividing them in two geographical zones.
The first site he takes up for description (pp. 84–95) is Kadwaha, situated 42 km
NW of the historic town of Chanderi (see Map 2, p. 43). Inscriptions show that this
important Śaivite site became subject to the Delhi Sultans in the fourteenth century
(p. 86). There is some misunderstanding, however, behind the statement that ‘when
Ibn Batuta came to Kadwaha, in 1342 ce, the maṭhas had been converted into a
ribāt’ (pp. 88–89), ribāt̤ meaning primarily a caravanserai. Since the author cites
not Ibn Bat̤ t̤ ūt̤ a, directly, but Tamara I. Sears,1 it is, perhaps important to clarify
what Ibn Bat̤ t̤ ūt̤ a actually says, and whether he refers to Kadwaha at all. When
he says he visited ‘Kajarrā’, and gives a description of the place, this has been
1
Tamara I. Sears, Archives of Asian Art, 59(1) (2009), pp. 7–31.

generally taken to mean a reference to the famous site of Khajuraho.2 Sears in the
article cited above (p. 25) questioned the identification of Kajarra with Khajuraho
and suggested instead that Kadwaha was the place Ibn Battuta visited because in
his account, Khajarra is placed, like Kadwaha, between Gawalior and Chanderi, it
being the last station before he arrived at Chanderi. This seems reasonable enough,
and Ibn Bat̤ t̤ ūta’s description of the ‘company of jūgῑs ( yogῑs)’ there suits Kadwaha
better than Khajuraho. He says nothing, however about any ribāt at Kadwaha; and
it is difficult to imagine how a large lake he remembered seeing at Khajarra could
have existed at Kadwaha.
There is nothing else in the surveys of the other sites that the reviewer is com-
petent to comment on, but Misra’s thoroughness in his description (with excellent
plans) is certainly worth noting.
Chapter 5 is devoted to a description of temples built by the Śaivite ascetics
and the sculptures that the sites contain. There are excellent black-and-white plates
printed along with the descriptions while coloured plates are provided at the end.
Some sculptures, such as Colour Plate 25, were carefully carried out, but let no
one here look for a parallel to Sanchi or Khajuraho.
The Śaivite ascetics of Central India in early medieval times were entitled to
have their history recovered; and they are fortunate to have found in the author
such a careful, non-partisan investigator of their past in all its aspects.
The book is well printed and remarkably free of misprints.
Irfan Habib
Shahid Amin, Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan
(New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan), 2015, 327 pp., `995 (Hb).
DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834802
This is a study of the legends and traditions of the warrior saint, Shaikh Salar Mas‘ūd
(popularly known as Ghazi Miyan or Bale Miyan) based on a critical evaluation
of multiple sources, such as Indo-Persian texts, popular folklore, colonial ethno-
graphic accounts, Urdu poetry and popular Hindi tracts. Ghazi Miyan is imagined
to be a nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni and a hero martyred in the holy war against
Hindu kings near Bahraich, in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, in 1034 ad. His tomb
at Bahraich is first mentioned in texts of the fourteenth century, so his cult was
already firmly established by then. It continues to draw pilgrims, both Muslim and
Hindu, from all over Northern India to Bahraich. Amin not only engages with a
wide range of sources but also uses them to recover the fascinating history of the
2
Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, tr. H.A.R. Gibb and C.F. Beckingham, Vol. IV, completed
by C.F. Beckingham, London, 1994, p. 790. See also Tim Mackintosh Smith, A Hall of Thousand
Columns, Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battūtah, London, 2006, pp. 166–82.
Book Reviews / 95
making of the legend of an Indo-Muslim Ghazi (warrior saint). Obviously the author
is not interested in the historical accuracy or otherwise of the accounts that have
accumulated, but reads them as reflecting popular memories, however contrived,
that centre around the figure of Ghazi Miyan.
The captivating narrative of Amin’s book is made more engaging by the use
of excellent maps depicting sites connected with the cult of Salar Masud, and
by photographs placed carefully in the middle of the text which apart from being a
visual treat can be read alongside the text. The book also contains a set of appendices
containing, among other things, poetry, folklore, ethnographic information, songs
and tables. For instance, Appendix 3 contains a poetical description of the Ghazi
Miyan Fair at Bahraich, c.1800, by Kazim Ali Jawan.
The book poses two fundamental questions: First, it tries to analyse how
social memory is related to the concerns and interests of community identities.
Following from this, the work reveals considerable variation in the way Ghazi
Miyan was remembered and venerated among the Indo-Muslim elites and the
subaltern classes. The second question that the book poses is how was the figure
of Ghazi Miyan transformed in the late colonial period into an icon for communal
mobilisation. Given the history of his veneration between the Hindus and Muslims
earlier in time, Shahid Amin seeks causes for Ghazi Miyan’s later invocation as a
religious fanatic, who destroyed Hindu temples.
Exploring the folk tradition, Amin points out that Ghazi Miyan was venerated
among the lower caste groups during the pre-colonial period. He was seen as the
protector of cattle, in particular, the cow. In popular memory therefore, the figure
of Ghazi Miyan had been appropriated as a local saint, protecting interests of local
folk. This is quite at odds with the representation of Ghazi Miyan in the Hindi
popular tracts written at the height of communal polarisation in the late colonial
period. For instance, Hindi tracts written in this period saw him as a bloodthirsty
warrior, waging a holy war or jihad against local Hindu communities. Amin’s work
establishes that the character of Ghazi Miyan or his appropriation for purposes of
communal mobilisation is a recent phenomenon and during the pre-colonial and
early colonial period, the popular memories saw him as a kind of a local hero.
In Indian historiography, figures such as Ghazi Miyan and his ‘uncle’, Sultan
Mahmud of Ghazni are a part of what Aziz Ahmad calls ‘The Epic of Conquest’.
According to this argument,
Muslim impact and rule in India, generated two literary trends: A Muslim epic
of conquest and a Hindu epic of resistance and of psychological rejection.
These two literary growths or trends were planted in two different and mutually
exclusive religious, cultural and historical attitudes each confronting the other
in aggressive hostility.
Amin’s book, on the other hand, reveals a story of accommodation and co-existence.
It is a story that emerges from popular legends and social memories, for, of course,
Ghazi Miyan is a legendary not a historical figure.

Not the least virtue of Shahid Amin’s book is that it is lucidly written and engages
the reader from beginning to end.
Shivangini Tandon
Anshu Malhotra, Piro and the Gulabdasis: Gender, Sect and Society in Punjab
(Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2017, 357 pp., `995 (Hb).
DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834803
The book, Piro and the Gulabdasis: Gender, Sect and Society in Punjab is
essentially about the socio-cultural landscape of mid-nineteenth century Punjab.
It revolves around the story of a low caste Muslim prostitute from Lahore, Piro,
and the sect of the Gulabdasis. The author terms the story of Piro’s life as a ‘micro-
narrative’ which brings events in Piro’s life to the centre stage of the narrative. The
work presents us with a unique autobiographical account: Piro was the disciple of
Guru Gulabdas who had his dera or spiritual hospice at Chatianwala village, in
Kasur near Lahore, now in Pakistan. He was revered by some for his scholarship
and knowledge about philosophical doctrines. But others considered him to be a
deviant who had transcended the accepted codes of shara (morality) as Gulabdas
had challenged some of the dominant customs and beliefs. He wrote extensively
and many of his compositions were a curious blend of languages such as Braj,
Punjabi, Urdu and sadhu bhasha. For instance,
Tu hi chain chaini, tu hi rog rogi

Tu hi soch sochi, tu hi jog jogi
Tu hi bhog bhogi, tu hi rag tani
Tu hi chitti chetan, tu hi budhimani. (p. 4)
The above verses by Gulabdas are a reflection of his belief in the philosophy of
non-dualist advaita. According to this doctrine, only one supreme being exists
and that reality is an organic whole without separate parts. Sikh and the colonial
literature on Gulabdas present him and his sect as complicated entities; Gulabdas
is described as someone with a restless heart/mind (chanchal chit; p. 20), who
disregarded the accepted social norms of behaviour. They spoke not only about the
peculiarity of the dress of the sect and its master but also about the liberal lifestyle
promoted by Gulabdas. The colonial sources, in fact, go so far as to define the
relationship between Piro and Gulabdas as ‘adultery’. Whatever the nature of their
relationship, Piro had to be in constant negotiation with her multiple identities; all
problematic and in constant contestation with the sacredness of the dera. Despite
these challenges, Piro managed to assert her identity and rejected any formal
religious affiliation. She writes:
Na main Musalmani na Hindu hosan …. (p. 96)

Book Reviews / 97
She was of the view that the obvious symbols of religion like style of facial hair/
circumcision, a top knot or sacred thread were only male prerogatives, whether
among Muslims or Hindus. This might explain her constant denial to even engage
with the various religious beliefs and rituals. Piro’s decision to flee the brothel at
Lahore and her choice of living a monastic life among the Gulabdasis (despite
threats received from the Muslim men of her community to take her back to the
brothel), shows her spirit of determination and self-assertion. Piro’s self-narrative
is a perfect example of how a woman, previously trapped in a profession of
disrepute was trying to find her voice in society. She used epic characters, bhakti
saints, sufi poetics and Puranic women to memorialise her life at a time when
women’s subjectivity hardly ever found expression in the written word. Piro’s
pursuit of the path of bhakti not only helped her attain spiritual fulfilment but also
enabled her to challenge the codes of conventional morality. Rather than being
devoted to any deity, Piro’s absolute devotion was for her Guru, Gulabdas.
Anshu Malhotra’s book offers the reader an engaging and thought-provoking
narrative about multiple identities, gendered landscapes and social hierarchies.
It highlights the fact that any power relation is as much constituted by forces of
resistance as by domination and control. Malhotra’s work successfully demonstrates
how one woman could defy established norms and assert her right to have beliefs
and a life of her own.
Shivangini Tandon
S. Irfan Habib, ed., Indian Nationalism: The Essential Writings (New Delhi:
Aleph Book Company), 2017, 285 pp., `499 (Hb). ISBN 97893-528-0837-3.
S. I rfan H abib , ed., Inquilab: Bhagat Singh on Religion and Revolution

(New Delhi: SAGE Publications), 2018, 192 pp., `295 (Pb). ISBN 978-93-
86021-05-2.
DOI: 10.1177/2348448919834810
These are two very timely volumes from the editorial desk of S. Irfan Habib,
already well known for his biography of Bhagat Singh and a work on problems of
Islamic ideology, Jihad or Ijtihad, and studies in the history of science.
In Indian Nationalism, S. Irfan Habib has given us a comprehensive
(but judicious) collection of extracts of writings mostly of pre-Independence
vintage, representing almost all the major ideological trends in the National
Movement (and some outside of it). The editor has selected different sets of
spokesmen of religion-tainted nationalism, secular nationalism, as well as
revolutionary nationalism (such being our rough-and-ready classification, the
editor’s own is finer and has more categories). The texts chosen show wide reading

on the editor’s part and considerable care taken in selection. From his own pen,
there is a long and helpful introduction. Equally helpful are the short biographical
notices furnished at the end about the authors whose writings have been included
in the volume. It would have been more helpful still if full particulars of the sources
from which the selected texts have been extracted had also been provided. Such
elementary but essential particulars can hopefully be furnished when the publishers
bring out a fresh edition.
Coming to the texts themselves, there are two visible themes around which
they revolve: first, the problem posed by the existence of two major religious
communities within India with visible cultural differences and seemingly inbuilt
hostility to each other; and, second, the vision of the future when Indians would
become masters of their own destiny. Many of the statements made, as much as
a hundred years ago and earlier, have a contemporary ring about them—a sad
comment on our mental progress since that time.
One must also be grateful to S. Irfan Habib for compiling a collection
of Bhagat Singh’s writings, since to read anything from Bhagat Singh, even
when one has read it previously, is an uplifting experience. His sincerity is as
over-whelming as the boldness and profundity of his thought: idealism and rational-
ity are in such combination here, and one cannot, of course, ever forget that it is all
coming from a man whose life was due to be so cruelly cut short by the executioner.
In an insightful introduction, S. Irfan Habib does well to set out the main elements
of the thought of the Indian people’s most beloved martyr.
Irfan Habib
Erratum
A critical view of Marshall’s Mother

Goddess at Mohenjo-Daro. Studies in
People’s History, 3, 2 (2016): 113–31.
DOI: 10.1177/2348448916665714
Shereen Ratnagar
It has come to notice of the editors, unfortunately very late in time, that figures
discussed in the above-mentioned article were omitted in the print version of the
article by error. However, the online version was correctly published. While deeply
regretting this, the figures are being printed below, in order to enable the interested
readers to refer to them while consulting Professor Ratnagar’s original article.
Sincere apologies for this lapse are due to both the author and readers.
Figure 1
Mohenjo-daro DK 3506, extant
height 23.2 cm, in National
Museum Delhi, NM 260.

DOI: 10.1177/2348448919854621
100 / Shereen Ratnagar
Figure 2
Mohenjo-daro DK 7841, 11.5 cm high extant and DK 2384,
18.7 cm high extant, both in National Museum of Pakistan,
Karachi.

A critical view of Marshall’s Mother Goddess at Mohenjo-Daro / 101
Figure 3 Figure 4
Harappa 8286, 12 cm high extant, Harappa HP 1603, woman
holding volute to head, National with rosettes on the head,
Museum Delhi, NM 226. Harappa.com
Figure 5 Figure 6
Mohenjo-daro DK 5797, National Mohenjo-daro 5989, 6.7 cm
Museum NM 213-230, 8.5 cm high high, National Museum Delhi,
(extant). NM 266.

102 / Shereen Ratnagar
Figure 7
Small and featureless figurines of men, found in numbers, in both cities,
interpreted by this author as war captives. Mohenjo-daro, DK 10099, ASI
62.1–71, and others.
Figure 8
Copper-sheet talismans occurring only in Mohenjo-daro; figure of a
“Hunter” and miscellaneous animals.

A critical view of Marshall’s Mother Goddess at Mohenjo-Daro / 103
Figure 9
Mohenjo-daro male, DK 3509, front and profile,
National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi, extant
height 14.5 cm.

IIM Kozhikode Society
& Management Review
Editor Professor Mohammed Shahid Abdulla
Special Issue Title: Project Management in the

Emerging World of Disruption
Special Issue Editors: Dr Rupesh Kumar Pati and

Dr Sidhartha S. Padhi
Volume 10, No. 1, January 2021

ISSN: 2277-9752
2 issues a year
Globalization has led to increased competition across the world forcing most
journals.sagepub.com/home/ksm
of the services and manufacturing industries (like construction, telecom,
pharma, IT & ITES, R&D, automobiles, space, airlines, electronics) to undergo
a tectonic shift in the way their business was traditionally conducted.
Businesses that manage to restructure themselves and operate successfully
into projectized organizations have achieved time-to-market agility. A large
portion of the success has also been attributed to the significant technology
development during the third industrial revolution (also known as Digital
Revolution—lasting close to three decades) with the introduction of computer,
internet, Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Through this
special issue we would try to answer some of the possible roles of these
technologies on a project environment such as:
¡ What could be the impact on society, environment and business?
¡ Can these tools play important role in managing project stakeholders?
¡ How are these going to impact project quality, time and cost?
This issue of the IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review look forward to
receiving high-quality original research papers using conceptual, empirical and
mathematical approaches to study challenges in project management domain.
Submissions are invited covering surveys, case studies, literature reviews,
quantitative approach etc. that link with the theme (but not limited to above
aspects).
Submission Guidelines: The manuscripts must not exceed 8,000 words;
while preparing the manuscripts, authors are requested to follow the Author
Guidelines available on the journal homepage at https://in.sagepub.com/en-in/
sas/journal/iim-kozhikode-society-management-review#submission-guidelines
Please send paper proposals at https://peerreview.sagepub.com/ksm
Submission Deadline: August 31, 2019.
Submission of comments by reviewers: December 31, 2019
Submission of the final version: March 31, 2020
South Asian Journal
of Macroeconomics
and Public Finance
Editor:
Prof. Sugata Marjit
Conference Convenor:
Saibal Kar
Call for Conference Papers at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,

Calcutta, December 16–17, 2019
Resurgence of Protectionism: International Trade, Immigration ISSN: 2277-9787

and Welfare Implications 2 issues a year
For a long time, the world has been engaged in the creation, nurturing, and expansion of
various international trade alliances, monetary unions and multi-country negotiations to
promote and sustain free movement of goods and resources. In recent times, however, there
journals.sagepub.com/home/smp
has been a marked resurgence of social and political interests seeking a world with closed
borders. Many of the erstwhile protagonists of free trade and free mobility have resigned into
protectionist corners. The countries in the west and some in the east are aggressively pushing
for more inward-oriented policies. These include resistance to international trade in goods
and services, obstruction to natural inclinations to outsource and offshore activities, and no
less importantly, curtailing cross border movements of legal migrants. Recent studies in this
direction do not offer clear prediction of how these activities, some of which also include
stark amendments to constitutional provisions in respective countries, would affect patterns
of trade and migration, product prices and factor returns and above all, growth and welfare.
A forthcoming issue of the South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance
shall be devoted to the subject of how resurgence of protectionism affects these issues
globally and locally. Papers dealing with implications of protectionist behaviour of the northern
and southern countries on international trade and factor movements, macroeconomic issues,
public finance, public choice, labor economics, etc., both theoretical and empirical, are
welcome. The submitted papers shall be considered for a proposed conference to be held on
16–17 December, 2019, at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India leading
to publication of selected papers in the South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public
Finance. Papers submitted to the journal would be subjected to standard reviews.
During online submission at https://peerreview.sagepub.com/smp, authors are requested to

choose submission under the special issue.
Authors are also requested to prepare manuscripts following the guidelines provided at the
following link: https://in.sagepub.com/en-in/sas/journal/south-asian-journal-macroeconomics-
and-public-finance#submission-guidelines
Submission Deadline: August 31, 2019. Alternatively, send the full paper to Professor Saibal Kar
at [email protected]
Registration Fee for the conference is US$100 to be submitted along with the full paper and
covers lunch, dinner and refreshments for the two days. Details about payment of registration fee
shall be communicated in due course. PhD Scholars are exempted from paying registration fees.
A limited amount of travel support may be available.

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Studies in People’s History

Volume 6 Issue 1 June 2019

Kesavan Veluthat/ The rise and fall of the kāvya project 5

Tim Dyson, A Population History of India: From the First Modern

Irfan Habib, Professor Emeritus, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

Shireen Moosvi, Formerly at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

K.S.M. Ishrat Alam, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

A.K. Bagchi, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata

Keywords: kāvya, praśasti, Rudradāman, Hariṣena, Harṣacarita, Palam Baoli inscription

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 5–15

vālmīkirādau ca sasarja padyam jagrantha yanna cyavano maharṣiḥ

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 5–15

for ānvīkṣikī (‘logic, logical philosophy, metaphysics’), daṇḍanīti (‘administration

... sṛṣṭavṛṣṭinā parjjanyena ekārṇṇavabhūtāyām iva pṛthivyām kṛtāyām girerūrja-

It reads thus in Kielhorn’s translation:

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1(2019): 5–15

Translation: He who, because from the womb he was distinguished by the

The chronological coincidence of the Śaka inscription and the Kuṣāṇa-patronised

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 5–15

Kielhorn’s translation: Then, on the subversion of that rule encompassed by

Epigraphia Indica, VI(1) (1900–01), pp. 1–12.

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1(2019): 5–15

kavitāśrita-kāḷidāsa-bhāravikīrtiḥ! Incidentally, the invocation of Kāḷidāsa and

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 5–15

Author’s translation: Salutations to Śambhu, whose lofty head is made resplen-

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1(2019): 5–15

abhoji tomarairādau couhāṇaistadanantaraṃ |

It goes on to give an authentic and accurate list of the succession of Sultans of

ādau sāhabadīnastataḥ paraṃ khuduvadīnabhūpālaḥ |

Pushpa Prasad’s translation: First came Sāhabadīna, then Khudavadīna, master

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 5–15

Note that everything here is as it is in any of the innumerable praśasti inscriptions

yasmin digvijayaprayāṇakapare gauḍā nirāḍambarā

Pushpa Prasad’ s translation: When he went forth on a military expedition, the

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1(2019): 5–15

gaṅgāsāgarasaṅgamaṃ pratidinaṃ prācyāṃ pradīcyāmapi

And the efficiency of his protection is hailed thus17:

asmin rājani bibhrati kṣititalaṃ śeṣō’pi niśśeṣato

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 5–15

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1(2019): 5–15

Irfan Habib and Faiz Habib

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 16–22

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 16–22

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 16–22

In January 1594 a significant legal document was prepared in which as many as

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 16–22

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 16–22

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 16–22

We now begin to have descriptions, though rather brief, of Vrindāvan town.

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 16–22

Amit Kumar Gupta

Keywords: Vidyasagar, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, Bhadralok, Neel Darpan, anecdotes, widow

A legend in his life-time, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91) is respectfully

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

It is likely that Vidyasagar’s views on such seminal issues of religiosity, polity

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

Studies in People’s History, 6, 1 (2019): 23–32

The Neel Darpan incident, which portrays a highly disciplined Vidyasagar

Kesavan Veluthat/ The rise and fall of the kāvya project 5

1. A volume of the ‘Literature Faculty Magazine’ would be devoted to