The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c6.s5: Marxist History
The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c6.s5
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Marxist History
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Today, Marxist historians and writers are well entrenched in academic and media sectors. Their rise has been encouraged by the Indian government. After Partition, Pakistan declared itself a theocratic state as is natural with Muslim nations. India opted to remain a secular country. This situation was very convenient to the special brand of Indian secularists; they could not become nationalist, so they turned Marxist.
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What are the salient features of Marxist history in India? To understand this we have to consult Marx himself. Between 1853 and 1857, Marx wrote twenty-three articles on India, and Engels eight, bearing on British rule in India. Marx took the Europe-centred view of Indias past. He shared all his assumptions on India with British rulers. Britain was to lay the foundations of the material progress in India on the annihilation of the traditional Indian society. He wrote in 1853:
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Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton. England had to fulfill a double mission in India: One destructive, and the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hinduised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, themselves conquered by the superior civilization of their subjects. According to him the British were the first conquerors who were superior, and therefore inaccessible to Hindu civilization. They destroyed it by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in the native society. The historic pages of their rule in India, report hardly anything beyond that destruction. The work of regeneration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless, it has begun.³⁰ Indian Marxists accept this thesis and fully subscribe to it.
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Harold Laski could write in 1927 that the effort to read the problem of India in the set terms of Marxism is rather an exercise in ingenuity than a serious intellectual contribution to socialist advance.³¹ In the early stages there was no concerted effort by Indian historians to interpret Indian history in Marxist terms. M.N. Roy attempted to give a Marxist interpretation of the Indian National Movement,³² but it was not until 1940 that a serious Marxist history was produced by R.Palme Dutt entitled *India Today*. D.D. Kosambis *An Introduction to the Study of Indian History* (1956), is regarded as a substantial Marxist interpretation of Indian history from the earliest times to the rise of British power in India. During the post-independence period, there has been a tremendous proliferation of Marxism in Indian universities. It appeared to be a fashionable creed, as compared with Gandhism which appeared to be traditional and somewhat unmodern.
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Where the Marxist, Imperialist, Secularist and Muslim communalist historians concur is in their attitude towards Hindu culture. Marxists, as did Marx himself, regard culture as bourgeois and anti-revolutionary. Culture, therefore, had to be denounced, including religion, God and morals, as an obstacle to proletarian change. Culture in the Indian context meant mainly Hindu religion and heritage. Hindu culture had, therefore, to be derided and held as the cause of Indias predicament. The Muslim communalists, who openly believed in religious distinctions and were naturally convinced of their own cultural superiority over that of the others, looked upon Hindu culture with disfavour. While the Marxists denounce in unmistakable terms imperial rule and imperialist historians, they join hands with them to demolish nationalist historians whose nationalism carried with it pride in their cultural past. They also denounce objective historians who, unlike the Marxists, do not seek to employ history as an instrument of change. Marxist attacks on culture also aim at hitting at the roots and source of inspiration of nationalism.
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Marxist history also lays claim to be counted as objective history. The phrase objective history is very attractive, but sometimes under this appellation, all shadows are removed and medieval times are painted in such bright colours by Marxist historians as to shame even the modern age. At others, modern ideas of class-conflict, labour-exploitation and all that goes with it, and many other modern phenomena and problems are projected backwards to fit in the medieval social structure. The word religion is tried to be eschewed because it is thought to be associated with bitter memories. If the medieval chronicler cries out *Jihad*, it is just not heard: but if he cries aloud persistently, it is claimed that he never meant it. The Marxists or leftists read into history what they think history should be. All this makes the content of Marxist history dubious, needing it to be buttressed by brochures, statements and booklets under a number of signatures. Often, Marxist writers work in groups, mutually admiring each others discoveries. The need for this also arises from the fact that Muslim rule in India remained Islamic basically, with firm belief in the superiority and propagation of Islam as an article of faith.³³ Atrocities committed by its followers in the name of Islam are often very graphically described by Muslim chroniclers as acts of piety and grace. This aspect has produced an unfortunate character in the Muslim civilization as a whole. It is in the combination of the spiritual and temporal powers, in the confusion of moral and physical authority, that the tyranny which seems inherent in this civilization originated. Its history is soaked in blood of the supposed enemies of Islam. But all this is denied by Marxists who always try to cover up the black spots of Muslim rule with thick coats of whitewash. Sometimes, this tryanny is sought to be condoned by fundamentalists on the plea that the ruler was only performing his duty, or denied by declaring that Muslim polity was not religion-oriented. But condonation or denial has not saved the Muslim regime from the harm its nature has brought to bear upon the reputation of the community and the history of the country.³⁴
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With regard to medieval Indian history the Marxist historians unwillingly tow the line of British writers of whom they are otherwise critical. The main interest of the British was to write a history which justified their conquest of India. They claimed that their rule in India was nothing new and that they were legitimate successors of former conquerors like Arabs, Turks and Mughals. The Mughals were represented as empire builders, who united India and gave it law and order, peace and stability. Similar was the mission of the British, they said. Facts, sometimes, compelled the British historians to speak of the atrocities and vandalism of Muslim rule but this did not deter them from upholding its authority. Thus British historians, while trying to legitimise their own rule, also gave legitimacy to their Muslim predecessors. But in the larger national consciousness both were considered as foreign impositions and constantly resisted. This resistance the British historians presented as revolts and rebellions against the legitimate Imperial authority. Marxist and communal historians apply these epithets in the case of Muslim rule, as also did the medieval chroniclers. Like the latter, the protestations of Marxist historians about Muslim rule in India are lofty, but their conclusions are grotesque. Such dichotomy is not new. Even a fourteenth century medieval historian Ziyauddin Barani suffered from such contradiction. He becomes lyrical when describing the benefits derived from the study of history,³⁵ but turns a die-hard fundamentalist when he actually writes it.³⁶
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On the basis of the study of medieval chronicles, scholars like Ishwari Prasad and A.L. Srivastava arrived at the conclusion that the medieval age was a period of unmitigated suffering for the Hindus; to others like I.H. Qureshi and S.M. Jaffar it was an age of all-round progress and prosperity. Writing about the Sultanate period, Ishwari Prasad says: There was persecution, partly religious and partly political, and a stubborn resistance was offered by the Hindus The state imposed great disabilities upon the non-Muslims Instances are not rare in which the non-Muslims were treated with great severity The practice of their religious rites even with the slightest publicity was not allowed, and cases are on record of men who lost their lives for doing so.³⁷ According to A.L. Srivastava the Sultanate of Delhi was an Islamic State, pure and simple, and gave no religious toleration to the Hindus and indulged in stifling persecution.³⁸ About the Mughal times his conclusion is that barring the one short generation under Akbar when the moral and material condition of the people was on the whole good, the vast majority of our population during 1526-1803 led a miserable life.³⁹ On the other hand, I.H. Qureshi had the mendacity to declare that The Hindu population was better off under the Muslims than under the Hindu tributaries or independent rulers. Their financial burden was lighter than it had been for some centuries in pre-Muslim days Nor was the Hindu despised socially. The Muslims, generally speaking, have always been remarkably free from religious prejudice.⁴⁰