The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c10.48

c10.48

Due to political exigencies, it has become a fashion, of late, to decry centrifugal forces without a proper assessment of their origin and significance. It is difficult to get a true perspective of Indian history without the recognition of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, the inter-action of which constitutes Indian history. The story of India, based on conventional literary and historical material, is one of an expanding vista of a continent, which was colonized, physically and culturally, by higher communities displacing their predecessors. The most important of such movements that vitally affected our history was that of the Aryans. They designated their first region of settlement as 'aryavarta' and as they moved into the land, spreading their influence and culture, they enlarged the connotation of their term for homeland. With the result that, while Aryavarta meant the upper valleys of the Punjab and N. W. frontier at the beginning of their expansion, by the 3rd century B. C. it denoted the land between the Himalayas and the 'Southern Sea'. The conventional slogan of unity in diversity does not fully bring out the true significance of the vertical forces representing the complex development of regional cultures in their local or provincial framework, and the impact of the horizontal forces that affected the various regional cultures. When these regional forces consolidated themselves, they tried to expand at the expense of their neighbours, giving rise to supra-regional forces. When 'political conditions settled, and a full-fledged State-system came into existence, this expansionist urge resulted in the emergence of larger and larger States culminating in the empires of Indian history. For example, with the consolidation of Magadha in the heart-land of India at the end of the 5th century B. C., the first empire in Indian history appeared under the aegis of the Mauryans at the beginning of the 4th century B. C. This was facilitated by the earlier attempts at colonization and expansion of the North Indian Aryan culture into the southern peninsula. Thus the establishment of the Mauryan empire incorporating the whole of India as far as the northern borders of Mysore more or less represents the first concrete evidence of the emergence of political and cultural homogeneity of the country. This pure political complexion has to a very extent been counteracted by the nature and process of the aryanization of India. It was not a mere folk-movement or immigra- [Figure: AREAS OF ATTRACTION or NUCLEAR REGIONS AREAS OF RELATIVE ISOLATION AREAS OF ISOLATION or CUL DE SACS PENETRATED IN RECENT TIMES]