The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c9.8

c9.8

For this survey, it is proposed to treat India in its geographic sense and so to include Pakistan. It is a very familiar experience of all of us that Indian history cannot be treated as a single unit at any period for any considerable duration. The obvious reason is the magnitude of the sub-continent. The maxim of unity in diversity has almost become stale. The whole history of India, in a sense, can be described as the conflict between the centripetal and centrifugal forces, engendered by geography. The former, viz. the centripetal forces, have always tried to give a political expression to the fundamental unity based on a common cultural and social heritage linked by a trans-continental communication system. As the following account will show, these forces have been strengthened by certain technological traditions common to the whole country. The centrifugal forces on the other hand are manifestations of the more vital geographic factors and have counter-acted the forces of unification. For example, while centralized empires like those of the Mauryas, Satavahanas, Guptas, Harsha, Mughal and the British etc., were short-lived, the ancient kingdoms like Kosala, Magadha, Gauda, Avanti, Lata, Saurashtra, Kalinga, Andhra, Maharashtra, Karnata, Chera, Chola, Pandya, seem as Dr. Majmudar¹ put it, "to have eternal lives", since they are the perennial nuclear regions in terms of human geography.