The Neglected Social Class in the study of Indian History

 The Constitution of India begins with the phrase, “We the People”.

Who are these people who so emphatically say that they are ‘We’ or they were ‘We’?

 

I can listen to some voices who are trying to educate me. They are probably saying that the answer follows in the Constitution in Articles 1 to 8 of the Constitution. The people belonged to a territory which is defined in the Constitution itself.

 

Well. It is a convincing answer. Now, let us sing our national anthem in praise of the nation.

Jan Gan Man Adhinayak Jai hai,

Bharata Bhagya Vidhata.

Punjab, Sind,

 

Hey, stop here. Sind is not covered in the territorial limits defined in the Constitution.

 

Again, the answer is heard. The nation is alive. If it is not there, then it will be included as it has reference to our History.

 

It seems that I am not fully educated and intellectually matured to raise some questions and seek the answer.

 

It is said that the territories, as defined in the Constitution of India, was considered to be a sink of Gold. Some people say that once the territory was known as a Golden Sparrow.

 

The people tell that Ghaznavi came to India merely to loot India because the Indian temples were surfeited with gold ornaments. Ghaznavi looted the temples. Ghaznavi also took away many artisans. He avoided direct battles. He exempted his subjects from any taxes for three years because of the wealth which he had taken away from India.

 

What was the form of the wealth which Ghaznavi took away from India? Were the artisans also the wealth of the nation? How did the artisans add to the wealth of the nation? Was that wealth grown in the fields? If the wealth was the agricultural produce, then why did they not consume it and became strong? Did they sold the produce of their fields to outsiders and obtained wealth from outside? Did they cross their seas to sell their produce? Did the foreign traders come to buy their products? If any such transactions did take place, who were the people who dealt with that? Were they the Indian traders and merchants? What does History say about those merchants?

The people again tell that they indulged in spiritual wealth. The merchant’s wealth was never their interest. There were rishis and saints and gurus.

 

Kindly tell us the name of the rishis, saints and gurus. How many can the people of India tell the names of the rishis who were the manas putras of Brahma? How many of them can tell the names of the Saptarishis? If there had been no Ramayana, even the villagers would not have been able to tell the names of Vashishta, Valmiki, Bharadwaj, and others. No doubt, many people have a religious bent of mind, but why do they not tell how there was so much wealth in India.

 

In the twentieth century, the scholars of India talked about the Dalit Class. They say that they were the most oppressed class. There were leaders like Guru Naryana, Jyotiba Phule, B. R. Ambedkar. That is good. But how many leaders were there before them who produced wealth for India? Was not the wealth of India the cause of the invasion of Turks and English?

 

There were Dhana Seths. There were Jagat Seths. Were Jagat Seths similar to Dhana Seths? No. As far as my study goes, Jagat Seth title had emerged during the Mughal period. It was the status granted by Mughal Nawabs. Manick Chand, a Marwari, was granted the title of Jagat Seth by the Bengal Subedar.

 

J Mills wrote The History of British India. In reaction to that, (yes it was a reaction), the nationalist historians wrote India's History. By the middle of the twentieth century, the Marxist Nationalist historians wrote the History of Dalits. They gave the thesis that it was the Tribes who were first to raise the nationalist flag. They talked about India's oppressed classes, the social vices, the caste-based oppression which was somewhere borrowed from the analysis of Indian society done by Imperialist historians. J Mills and Imperialist historians never wrote History of India for India. They wrote the History to explain the activities of the British Empire. They were clear about their agenda. Their agenda was to learn about the culture of the people whom they were ruling and wanted to keep them under their administration. They wanted to arrange their state activities as per the understanding they acquired after evaluating the ground forces. They selected the data as per their requirement and interpreted them as per their agenda. Till 1803, they spoke respectfully of Maratha rulers. They feared Marathas. They also feared Mughals. However, by 1757, they lost the fear of Mughals. They were now directing the politics of the Mughals. By 1818, they even lost the fear of Marathas. They had made Baji Rao II their pensioner. Gaikwad and Solanki were their foreigner friends in political management of India.

 At this stage, their anger was directed towards the Brahmins. They found the culprits in Brahmin caste who had degraded the Indian society, allowing the imperialist agenda to do the civilization work in India. During this period, the Christian missionaries were allowed within the territories of East India Company in India. The Christian Missionaries then started finding India's social vices, which were quite loathsome for any civilized society. The Missionaries targeted the religious practices like Sati, the plight of widows, polygamy, female infanticide, and social discrimination based on religion.

All the vices and shortcomings were found in the society of India. However, none of them spoke about the merchant class. They were used to acquire control over the market. They were called undependable and unreliable. However, they were not criticised as a social class. Blair Kling declared it as his discovery in 1976 that there were entrepreneurs in India when he wrote the biography of Dwarakanath Tagore. Kling deplored the non-availability of the original sources to write about the Indian Businessman. Did the British administration not prepare any reports on the merchant classes of India? Probably they had done that, but they are hidden somewhere in the archives of British Parliament or the East Indian Company records. On the other hand, we do not find any major work on the merchants who were identified as the third section of the Hindu society as per the caste structure of the Indian society.

 

In independent India, History is taught. The citizens are told that the son of Babur was Humayun. The son of Humayun was Akbar. Jahangir was the son of Akbar and father of Shahjahan. Shahjahan was the father of Aurangzeb. When a young citizen is able to recollect the family tree of the Mughal Empire, he is declared as a person who knows his History. Such a knowledgeable citizen is the member of the group ‘We the people’, who stands by India's Constitution. The members of the ‘We the people’ group know the family tree of the Mughal dynasty. After that, he talks about the caste structure of India, oppressed classes of India and socialism. He is convinced that he has a glorious past because his forefathers were spiritually advanced people. He is told that his aim in life is Purusharth which includes Dharam, Artha, Kama and Moksha. To prove his worthiness to his society, he pretends to do everything for Dharma and Moksha. Deeper below in his heart, he seeks Artha but never declares it. He is told that History of India tells that if you are an Indian, then you must work for Dharma and Moksha. On the side-line, he is told that his forefathers were very rich. However, he is not told about the class which had made his country prosperous and wealthy.

 

The merchant and business classes are now studied. However, they are not studied by the historians of the universities of the history department. They are studied as the case studies by the Management schools. Gurcharan Das in an introduction to Marwaris by Thomas Timberg that "India was fortunate in having communities who for centuries have known to conserve and grow their capital." Gurcharan is not a historian, but when he says that he has a hypothesis on communities, he emphasises the gap in the study of History of India.

 

In the twentieth century, in a taunt of the narratives of the Indians, there were the names of Tata Birla and Dalmia. By the end of the twentieth century, the taunt was compressed to Tata Birla, and Dalmia was forgotten. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the taunt is now changing, and it has become Ambani and Adani. However, the reference to the community remains the part of the narrative, but the subject of study in History. Management schools are undertaking the work, but they do that in the form of case studies. Gurcharan Das mentions such studies under the topic of the story of Indian Business. Gurcharan mentions the names of Trautmann, Kanakalatha Mukund, Trithankar Roy, Lakshmi Subramanian, Gregory Schopen, Donal Davis, Scott Levis, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Muzaffar Alam, Raman Mahadevan, and Medha Kudaisiya who studies the business communities based on historical records. However, do the school and college courses know about Pottdar, Thakurdas Purshotamdas, Birla, Bajaj, Maheswaris, Aggarwal's, and their roles in the History of India? Can it be said that the business communities themselves had influenced the writing in History and directed all the attention to the political and social reformers? There is no account in History to talk about the Indian Chaebol. In other words, there is no emphasis on the role of the merchant Banias in Indian History. We learn about the Bhai Makhan Shah the Gujarati Sikh trader of the seventeenth century. We learn about the Parekh and their relation with the Mughal courts. We learn about the inscriptions on the temples of devoted merchants. However, they are not the subject of History.

The History Departments of the Indian Universities believe that the agenda and goal of Independent India are to grow prosperous by promoting the theme of Democracy and Socialism. Ramchandra Guha has commented that the agenda of the study of the History Departments ends at 1947. 

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