Secular History & Nationalism - I
If there was one thing we as a nation
failed miserably, it is in forging a spirit of nationalism. The US which came
into being only two hundred years ago is proud of its nationalism but we with a
history of over five thousand years do not have a national ethos, national
pride or national spirit. It would be nearer the truth to say that there is a
concerted attempt to prevent India from forging a national spirit. A fabricated
concept called ‘composite culture’ was sought to be projected by negating the nation’s
achievements in the social, political, scientific and spiritual fields in the
first four thousand years. Another aspect of the fabrication was to magnify and attribute
all social ills to the original Hindu culture and all reformatory thought to
the artificial construct called syncretic or composite culture. This series examines how some of the ills were
sought to be stripped out of context and blown out of proportion.
Eulogizing the social reforming zeal of Gurazada Appa
Rao, K. Rosaiah, former A. P. Chief Minister and present Tamil Nadu Governor,
made a stunning observation. He said, ‘… if we went back a little, the
abominal practice of Sati comes to mind’.
Rosaiah was delivering his speech
as the Chief-guest at the 150th birth
anniversary of the Telugu social reformer and writer, Gurazada
Appa Rao. Appa Rao became famous for his play, Kanyä Sulkam,
literally, ‘bride-fee’. The play centred on the practice of buying brides
prevalent among some sections of the Brahmin society.
The Brahmins were reviled for a variety of ills that plague
the society today and many orthodox practices, by the left-liberal
intelligentsia. This was despite the fact that it was the Brahmins who
not only preserved our cultural traditions through troubles and tribulations
for over five thousand years but also initiated many social reform movements.
One of the
social ills for which the Brahmins were - unjustly and
without any basis in fact - blamed was the treatment they meted out to their
women. In spite of the prevalence of such misconceptions, according to
scriptures a Brahmin (even today) is ineligible to
participate in religious rituals without his woman. Therefore elderly widowers
had to remarry in order to be eligible to practise their profession -
priesthood. Those families which had the means did not offer their daughters in
marriage to elderly widowers but poor families did, sometimes in exchange for
money. The money came in handy for performing another girl’s marriage or for
other necessities of living. It was a practice born out economic and social
necessities. It was a practice of a minuscule section of society, as Brahmins constitute
not more than 2% -3% of the population. And only those Brahmins who
were into their traditional role as priests had a problem with widower-hood.
Nevertheless it was a bad practice which the social reformer Appa Rao sought to
highlight through his play.
If one were to go by Rosaiah’s observation about Sati
it was an everyday happening in Andhra Pradesh, even if it was in the past! One needn’t have bothered if some
lesser mortal were to make a statement like that. People in public life have to
make speeches everyday and quite a few of them are given to uttering gibberish.
Either Rosaiah (or his speech writer) might have remembered a snippet from the
history textbook of his school days, and used it to enliven the
speech. It is in this context that one ponders over questions like ‘why is
history taught in schools?’
What
are the objectives of teaching history? One would expect that the prime
objective of teaching history is to inculcate in the young minds a pride in
their glorious past and a spirit of nationalism. At a purely academic level, W. H. Davis listed the following
as the three main objectives for teaching history: ‘first, to
present the past to the pupil in an intelligible fashion, capable of
interpretation; second to inculcate historical-mindedness; and third to
inculcate intellectual tastes.’ (‘Some Attainable Objectives in
the Teaching of History.’ The High School Journal. Vol. 12. No. 4.
Apr. 1929. pp. 132-134. University of North Carolina Press. Accessible from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40363669)
If the
objective of teaching history is to ‘present the past in an intelligible
fashion, capable of interpretation’, does the history that is taught in our
educational institutions factually represent the practice of Sati?
Or did the British practice of concocting ‘atrocity literature’ colour
our thinking?
‘An
Advanced History Of India’ by R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychaudhuri and
Kalikinkar Datta (1950. Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London) has eleven references
in all to ‘Sati’. A reference to the subject of Sati in
the early Magadhan epoch, circa sixth century B.C.E. has this
to say: ‘Widow marriage and Levirate had not fallen into disuse even
in the Ganges valley and burning of widows was not sanctioned
by the orthodox lawgivers.’ (p. 75).
After
Alä-ud-din Khalji’s expedition against Mewar resulted in the latter’s rout
and ‘when further resistance seemed impossible’, the Rajputs of Mewar ‘preferred
death to disgrace and performed […] that horrible rite, the
Jauhar […] to find security from dishounour in the devouring
element.’ (Ibid. p. 302).
However the practice of Jauhar consisted of the mass
immolation not only of women, but also children, the elderly and the sick, at a
time when their fighting men died in battle against the Muslims. It was also
pointed out that the practice of Sati was prevalent only among
the higher social orders.
We must
admit ‘social codes of conduct and honour’ are products of the times.
Several examples illustrate this point. The practice of Levirate in
which a brother marries the widow of his childless brother (in order to
maintain his line) was a Biblical practice and described in
the Old Testament. It was common practice in ancient Greece for
a king who won a war to kill his opponent and take his wife. The mythological
story of Oedipus who, because of a prophesy, ‘kills his
father and marries his mother’ was used as a subject by quite a few Greek dramatists
like Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides.
At times, ‘social
codes of conduct and honour’ can spread horizontally and become contagious.
For instance, see this in Majumdar et al.: ‘Some Muslims of aristocratic
Hindu origin, or living in a Hindu environment, assimilated the Hindu customs
of Sati and Jauhar’ (p. 402).
It is
therefore necessary to exercise abundant caution while teaching about such
ancient social practices to young minds. They were more an aberration than a norm.
