Reclaiming A Narrative!

It is a little understood fact that much of history is perception. We believe what we believe we are, in a world where people can be conditioned. There was shamefaced understanding when I was growing up, that India was a rather weak country, populated by a weak people who would turn tail and run at the slightest sign of an invader. We were conditioned!

Post the 1971 war with Pakistan wherein that country was split into two parts after a resounding defeat, Pakistan has worked overtime in turning to condition its populace and reinforce a canard that India and in particular its Hindu population are a set of weaklings. So much so that the history books of Pakistan carry stories of the weak Hindu ‘Bania’ who was never a fighting man. The negative depictions of Hindus in particular and Indians in general are carried out by framing and historical distortions fostering a false sense of bravado and misplaced religious superiority by quoting selectively.

While this is the prevailing perception, let us look at some recorded history.

The first set of people who tried to cross into India were probably the Persians. The Achaemenid Empire underwent considerable expansion, both eastward and westward, during the reign of Cyrus the Great (c.600–530 BC), leading the dynasty to take an interest into the region of northwestern India and it is supposed that they ruled the upper Indus Valley. The expansion was stopped there and the Persians could not make progress into the rest of North India. Should they have, they would have probably run into the first recorded Indian Empire ruled by Bimbisara and his son Ajatashatru from Pataliputra (Patna).

Alexander, the Greek was at a similar spot almost two hundred years later after decimating the Persians in 326 BCE. At the doorstep of India, he turned back, not daring to invade India. There is a fair amount of controversy, about his supposed victory in Punjab. Should he have, he would have run into the massive Nanda armies. His Seleucid army was soon shown the door by the rise of the Mauryas – Chandragupta Maurya.

Indo-Scythians were a group of nomadic Iranian people who migrated southward into western and northern South Asia from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE. The first Saka king in South Asia was Moga (1st century BCE) who established Saka power in Afghanistan, and Indus Valley. The Indo-Scythians extended their supremacy over north-western India, conquering the Indo-Greeks and other local kingdoms. The Indo-Scythians were apparently subjugated by the Kushan Empire, by either Kujula Kadphises or Kanishka. Yet the Saka continued to govern as satrapies or local governors. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE after the Indo-Scythians were defeated by the Satavahana emperor Gautamiputra Satkarni, whose mother was said to have had a large influence on him. Saka rule in the northwestern Indian subcontinent ceased when the last Western Satrap Rudrasimha III was defeated by the Gupta emperor Chandragupta Vikramaditya in 395 CE.

Just as the Sakas migrated to western and northwestern India after being driven out of their Central Asian homelands, the Kushans also arrived in northwestern India after a long migration across Central Asia. The Kushans were a branch of the Yuezhi, a nomadic group whose defeat by the Huns led to their migration across the Tarim Basin to Bactria between ca. 165-128 BCE. By the middle of the first century CE, Kushan power extended from Bactria across the Hindu Kush to Gandhara and Takshashila (in modern Pakistan). The Kushan Empire reached its zenith under Kanishka an ardent Buddhist and eventually fell prey to their old enemies the Huns.

Probably the most serious threat to India was caused by the Huns (5th Cen. CE), of Central Asia. Fierce nomadic, horse riding warriors, they swept through Europe and into India after decimating the Persians. The Hunas were eventually beaten for the last time by the latter Gupta king Narasimha Gupta and the Aulikara monarch Yashodharman, who has recorded his victory on a pillar that still stands today. It is recorded that the Huna king Toramana, captured by Narasimha Gupta was let go on the intervention of the Gupta emperor’s mother. The Mandsaur stone inscription of Yashodharman-Vishnuvardhana was written in 532 CE and records the construction of a well by a person named Daksha in Dashapura (modern Mandsaur), during the rule of Yashodharman. It is believed that the Guptas came up with the idea of the stirrup which gave them the advantage in beating the Hunas ( An invention that we have not been credited for).

In the first half of the 8th century CE, a series of battles took place between the Umayyad Caliphate (Arab) and the Indian kingdoms to the east of the Indus River. Subsequent to the Arab conquest of Sind in present-day Pakistan in 712 CE, Arab armies engaged kingdoms further east of the Indus. Between 724 and 810 CE, a series of battles took place between the Arabs and the north Indian Emperor Nagabhatta I a king of the Gurjara - Pratiharas, the south Indian Emperor Vikramaditya II of the Badami Chalukyas. In the north, Nagabhata defeated a major Arab expedition in Malwa. From the South, Vikramaditya II sent his general Pulakesi, who defeated the Arabs in Gujarat. Later in 776 CE, a naval expedition by the Arabs was defeated by the Saindhava naval fleet. The Arab defeats led to an end of their eastward expansion and later manifested in the overthrow of Arab rulers in Sindh itself and the establishment of indigenous Muslim Rajput dynasties there.

The next serious invasion of India occurred when Mohammed of Ghor (Central Asian Turk from Afghanistan) invaded India and occupied Delhi after defeating Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. Post this there have been various indigenous people who have fought on, the Rajputs, the Jats, The Marathas, and the Sikhs. South India was never fully conquered and the Mughal Aurangzeb, at the time of his death, was still trying to conquer it in 1707 CE after his grandfather Akbar had attempted conquest almost 100 years before. The Mughals were finally defeated by the British at Buxar in 1764 CE and the Sikhs were defeated in 1849, allowing the British a grip on India till 1947. This is not to forget that the British had to defeat Tipu Sultan in 1799 CE and the Marathas in 1818 CE. The age was interspersed with the Vijayanagara Kingdom who ruled almost the whole of South India, from 1336 CE to 1565 CE and in 1857 the East India Company had to hand over India to the British Crown after the Sepoy Mutiny.

In fact, it can be seen, that till not very long ago, the area of present-day Pakistan was generally occupied by invaders and the only power to really get a complete hold of geographic India were the British. India and Indians have cherished their freedom and fought for it. In fact, the ancient Vedic culture survives as a civilization to this day, because of the Indians ability to defend it and it's time to reclaim our national narrative of a people who are peaceful but are capable of astutely defending themselves.