India’s past, revisited
KESAVAN VELUTHAT
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This collection of seminal essays by the author deals with every aspect of early Indian history
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RETHINKING INDIA’S PAST: R. S. Sharma; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 695.
Professor Ram Sharan Sharma is among those historians of India who gave a totally new orientation to the study of early Indian history. A site of the battle royale between the cynical imperialists and the romantic nationalists, historical writing in India had hardly admitted questions related to society, economy, and so on, not to speak of the less fortunate sections in it who were “untouchables” even to historians. Along with D.D. Kosambi, Sharma brought a materialist approach to bear upon Indian history, thus bringing people into history, which was otherwise crowded with kings and queens. Included in this appropriately titled collection are some of the seminal essays he wrote forcing a rethinking of India’s past.
Landmark lectures
It was Sharma’s path-breaking book on the Sudras, a “social history of the lower orders,” that catapulted him, more than half a century ago, into Indian historical writing. Even earlier, he had published a paper on the feudal formations in the Gupta and post-Gupta periods, which he developed in the landmark lectures he gave in the University of Calcutta in 1965. This began to show that, contrary to the received wisdom that the age of the Guptas represented a “golden age,” the period actually saw the feudalisation of the economy and society and the subjection and immiserisation of a vast section of population. Along with the feudal relations, or as a causative factor of the emergence thereof, Sharma identified a decline in trade and decay of urban centres in the archaeological records of the Gangetic valley as well as a major social crisis in the descriptions of the Kaliyuga in the Puranic accounts.
He also traced the formation and transformation of political institutions and ideas in early India and did a thorough-going analysis of the material culture and social formations in early India.
Thus, touching nearly every aspect of the history of early India, he revolutionised the understanding of the processes and structures associated with it.
Defend
The present collection offers a cross-section of the significant interventions that Sharma has made over the past half-a-century. The first few articles are historiographical reviews which also defend his position in an authentic manner. A few others, such as those on different stages in the economy and the mode of production in ancient India, and the transition from the ancient to medieval are clear statements of the historiographical position that he has taken. With this, Sharma defends his thesis of Indian feudalism, urban decay, and Kaliyuga.
The introduction is a bold statement of the article of faith of the historian. In the context of the onslaught of obscurantist theories at the expense of evidence, Sharma makes a plea for the practice of history in the classical manner, where the utmost loyalty should go to evidence. For him, a materialist interpretation of the evidence makes the most sense. This is perhaps the most comprehensive deposition that we have had from the master.
Marxist point
Read with another essay, “the need for an integrated approach”, we can get the best Marxist position on the subject. In the article on “How feudal was Indian feudalism?” Sharma makes a bold defence of the concept when it came under attack from various quarters. Whether one goes all the way with him or not, the persuasive way in which he argues, and adduces evidence in support of his argument, is hard to miss. So also, it is not by mechanically filling in a checklist of the constituents of feudalism but by going to the totality of the experience that he makes the argument. That is why the “feudalism debate” in Indian history became so productive from both sides of the barricade.
A few other articles , such as the one on historical archaeology and urban decay, social change in early medieval India, add supportive evidence to this defence of Indian feudalism. The review of Romila Thapar’s book, ‘From Lineage to State,’ is very significant. The essay on ‘Rahul Sankrityayana’ is homage to a polymath. In sum, the collection is indispensable to every serious student at all levels.
For a book of this importance, a little more editorial care would have been in order. As these are essays reproduced from already published sources, there are repetitions which could have been avoided. The essays could have been better arranged. For instance, the third chapter, “Writings on early Indian polity” takes the story from the 1950s, while the fourth chapter, “Studies in ancient polity” is concerned with the writings up to the 1950s. These could have been transposed. These irritants notwithstanding, the book is of lasting value.
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