His kingdom was not big but his achievements were. He called himself Vichitra Chitta—the ever curious. His interest in music is immortalised in epigraphs. He wrote a rip-roaringly funny farce in Sanskrit. It was he who discarded perishable material such as wood for building temples and introduced rock-cut structures that culminated later in the glory of Mahabalipuram. His name is Mahendra Verman, a Pallava king who prospered in the early years of sixth century CE. Not many in North India will know his name. To be fair, Romila Thapar manages to bring out his achievements in a brief passage in her book Early India, but they remain buried in the middle of a book of about 500 pages. Rajaraja, who built the wondrous big temple in Thanjavur, and his son Rajendra, whose maritime achievements remain unequalled by any other king of India, are not exactly household names outside Tamil Nadu. The fascinating stories of Vishnuvardhana, who was converted to Vaishnavism by Ramanuja and his wife Santala, who remained a devout Jain, are rarely mentioned in textbooks outside Karnataka. Even the amazing Hampi was relatively unknown in North India until recently, and Krishnadevaraya is just a tongue-twister.
The Othering Of History: India’s History Books Are Heavily North-Centric
Our history books have to do justice to every region of India — but only for the sake of truth and for acquiring a balanced knowledge of our great land
Not confined to South India
It is not that this neglect is confined to South India. Ask a Bengali or an Odia, or a child of the Brahmaputra, and she will say that the rest of India is unaware of the history of her region. The Ahom kingdom, which dominated the Northeast for six hundred years, is usually treated less than cursorily in history books. For instance, Satish Chandra’s standard textbook, History of Medieval India, has this to say about the Ahoms. “The Ahoms, a Mongoloid tribe from north Burma, had succeeded in establishing a powerful kingdom in the thirteenth century, and had become Hinduised in the course of time. The name Assam is derived from them.” Later in the book, the Ahoms find a mention only because of the invasion and conquest of Assam by Mir Jumla. Every history book in India is centred around Delhi and its neighbourhood.
Not confined to history
This neglect is not confined to history. Even when I was a young boy, I was familiar with Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra, Sarat Chandra, Munshi Prem Chand and several other North India writers. Of course, the heroic stories of Rajputana were textbook stuff. The story of Panna, the faithful nurse, was known to every school-going child. When I came to Delhi, I was amazed that even widely-read persons found it difficult to mention even one name of literary eminence from South India, excepting perhaps Subramania Bharati. Yes, they spoke airily about the incredible temples and the orthodoxy of South India that in their view had saved Hindu culture from the ‘contaminating’ influence of Islam, but most were unaware of the unique Tamil classics, Silappadikaram and Manimekhalai—one upholding the Jain view of the world and the other, Buddhist.
I served under a person who was amazingly well-read. His library had more than 20,000 books. Once we were returning from a minister’s office where we had just received an unjustified but severe dressing-down. My senior didn’t speak a word before the minister. When we were in the elevator, he told me that this was how one should restrain one’s anger. I just smiled and quoted Valluvar: “One should restrain one’s anger where it can really harm. In other places, it doesn’t matter one way or the other.” I said, “Your anger is unlikely to harm the minister, but it is a different story with your subordinates.” He was swept off his feet. The next day, I presented him with an English translation of Tirukkural. What was significant was that his vast library had no translations from Tamil or any other South Indian language—a fact that he shamefacedly admitted.
Not intentional
I don’t think the neglect of our history in textbooks or the lack of awareness of our literature is intentional and due to some diabolical schemes by North Indians. In all probability, this is due to the laziness of our own historians and translators. Our inertia is notorious. Vincent Smith’s The Early History of India appeared in the year 1908. It saw several editions and was taught in schools even many years after Independence. In the first edition, he writes: “But the time for writing in brief the history of the southern kingdoms in a satisfactory manner has not yet come, and at present any sketch such as that now offered must be tentative and incomplete.” In the years after these words had been written, many seminal books on North Indian history have appeared but the scene is not that bright when it comes to South India. In fact, in the last century, many epigraphs had been unearthed and of the one lakh or so epigraphs now available, a great majority of them are from South India. Unfortunately, many of them remain unread. There are several other records available now but they all rot in archives. It is only because our academics have chosen to remain lazy that we still depend on Nilakanta Sastri’s History of South India. Yes, a few more books have started appearing—books like The Concise History of South India, edited by Noburu Karashima—but they lack the sweep and comprehensiveness of Sastri. Young writers like Manu Pillai and Anirudh Kanisetti have come out with splendid books, but many such books remain to be written. The story must be the same in Eastern and Northeastern India. For the history of Bengal, we still make a beeline to R.C. Majumdar or Jadunath Sarkar. We still seek Sir Edward Gait’s 1906 book if we want to know about the history of Assam.
The same is true of literature. Only recently have good translations of non-Hindi literature started appearing in English and Hindi.
The lurking devil
Literature will take care of itself but there is a terrible devil lurking in the shadow of rewriting our history—the devil of fake and chauvinistic history writing. In Tamil Nadu, bit players who had no major role in history, or even fictional characters are being dressed up and presented as great heroes who fought the British. Not to be outdone, the Tamil Nadu government is now using archaeology for blatant chauvinistic purposes. Only in the Tamil country do we witness the strange spectacle of serious archaeological issues being discussed not in the academia but in the assembly and at political forums.
Kanisetti says in his book Lords of the Deccan: “But I should clarify again that…medieval India was a dark, violent and unequal place. The medieval lords of the Deccan were not saintly devotees or noble conquerors or brilliant masterminds. They were human beings doing the best they could, responding to personal disasters, trying to get rich and be happy and find companionship and see beauty in a difficult world. Changing the course of human history was just an unplanned side effect of all that.”
So long as we keep in mind that rewriting history is only a method of shedding light on areas that have hitherto remained in the dark, and definitely not a tool to invent new religious or regional heroes or adorn old heroes with gaudy and improbable attires, we are on the right track. Our history books have to do justice to every region of India—but only for the sake of truth and for acquiring a balanced knowledge of our great land.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Textbook Ignorance")
(Views expressed are personal)
P.A. Krishnan is an author in English and Tamil