The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c6.s4: Modern Indian Historiography
The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c6.s4
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Modern Indian Historiography
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On the basis of chronicles available in Persian, Arabic and Hindi, but mainly in Persian, European and Indian writers set about reconstructing the history of medieval India. The study of medieval Indian history in modern times may be said to have begun about a century ago when, in the eighteen-sixties, and under the patronage of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the Indo-Persian chronicles of the medieval period began to be printed in the Bibliotheca Indica Series, and in 1867-77 appeared Elliot and Dowsons *History of India as Told by its Own Historians*. Elliots work contained in eight fairly bulky volumes translations of extracts from most of the then known Persian chronicles, and soon became indispensable for the researcher on medieval history. The original Persian works were so eulogistic of the cruelties of Muslim conquerors and rulers that the great painstaking scholar Elliot and his followers were perforce constrained to be critical of medieval Indian rulers, and this school held the ground for quite some time.
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Soon other writers, who would not agree with this criticism, or who were determined to refute it, appeared on the scene, and the situation so created divided the modern Indian writers on medieval history into objective and pro-Muslim or apologist historians.
c6.s4.3
In the beginning, medieval historiography remained confined to political history or biography writing. Then, gradually, the non-political features of medieval India like the cultural influence of Muslim rule, Islam as a civilisation, literature and art, social and economic life, began to attract the attention of scholars. That history is not to be merely a narrative of kings and wars, but has to be a story of the people as well, has now become well recognized. But this concept has taken time to grow. There is now the conviction that history is a form of critical inquiry into the past and not merely a repetition of testimony and authority. The modern historiographer of Medieval History tries to probe into the ideas behind human actions performed in the past. These motives they find, unlike the medieval historiographer, not only in religious, but in political, economic, social and other causes and try to discover a relationship between them. And lastly, modern historiography applies the critical apparatus of footnotes, appendices, bibliography, and sometimes maps also.
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However, when medieval Indian historiography was making good headway, India was partitioned into two. Partition of the country has been tragic in many ways, but no branch of study has been perhaps so much directly and vitally affected by it as the historiography on medieval India. Many distinguished scholars conversant with classical Persian went over to Pakistan and history has suffered from their migration. This can be easily seen in the number of students offering Medieval History in colleges and universities and in articles published in the historical journals of the country or papers read at various conferences - as compared with the Ardent or the Modem periods of Indian history. At the Trivandrum session of the Indian History Congress (1958) a seminar was held to probe into the causes of this decline and suggest means of checking it, but nothing much seems to have been done to improve the position. On the other hand, once in a while one even comes across the puerile argument: Where is the necessity of continuing with medieval historical studies in India after the creation of Pakistan?
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But the worst effect of partition has been that 1947 has tended to produce two historiographies based on territorial differentiation. Comparing the works of Ahmad Ali entitled *Culture of Pakistan* with Richard Symonds *The Making of Pakistan* (London, 1950) on the one hand and Humayun Kabirs *Indian Heritage* and Abid Hussains *National Culture of India* on the other, W. Cantwell Smith says that the Pakistani historian flees from Indianness, and would extra-territorialize even Mohenjodaro (linking the Indus-valley civilisation with Sumer and Elam) as well as the Taj (yet though left in India, the monuments and buildings of Agra and Delhi are entirely outside the Indian tradition and are an essential heritage and part of Pakistani culture, - p.205), and omits from consideration altogether quite major matters less easily disposed of (such as Asokas reign, and the whole of East Pakistan) The Indians on the other hand seek for the meaning of Muslim culture within the complex of Indian unity in diversity as an integral component.²⁷ So, after 1947, besides the objective and apologist, Secular and Communal versions, there are the Pakistani and Indian versions of medieval Indian history.²⁸
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Today, besides individual workers in many places, some universities in particular, like the Aligarh Muslim University, are specially devoted to medieval Indian historiography. Aligarh has funds, facilities and professoriate for medieval history, and all these have given her advantage over other universities in devoting itself mainly to medieval Indian historical studies. The *Medieval India Quarterly*, the various texts and books edited and published under Aligarh Historical Series and the studies on Sufi saints may be recounted with a feeling of satisfaction.
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However, the revised edition of the second volume of Elliot and Dowsons *History of India as Told by its Own Historians* published from Aligarh contains a long introduction on dialectical materialism and the materialistic interpretation of history by Mohammed Habib. The idea has caught on and there is a clear Marxist influence on the Aligarh school which has prompted Peter Hardy to say that the significant feature of Professor Habibs Marxist interpretation of medieval Indian history is not that Marxism has absorbed Islam but that Islam has absorbed Marxism²⁹