I was drawn to this particular book, courtesy references made to the late Sir Jadunath Sarkar, in J. Sai Deepak’s best-selling foray into decolonialism, “India That Is Bharat”. In “India Through The Ages” Professor Sarkar, imparts to his readers a critical understanding of India’s unique and indelible culture. A culture that from time immemorial has been a synthesis and syncretism of diverse values and myriad religions. It is this syncretism that is at the forefront of Sarkar’s slim volume. The material found in the book mainly represents the first course of Sir William Meyer lectures which the author delivered at Madras (now Chennai) University in March 1928.

Sarkar enthusiastically argues throughout his book that there exists a distinct and inherent ‘vitality’ among the Indian populace. This vitality, in turn bestows upon the country a degree of immutability. Despite being ravaged by an unrelenting flood of invaders, and as a consequence, remaining exposed to myriad cultures, values and beliefs, the Indian people continue to retain as their bulwark, a civilization that is unique and a mind that is indigenously fertile and active. While there can be no doubt that Indians are a composite ethnic product, the various constituent elements “have all been contributing to a common culture and building up a common type of tradition, thought and literature”. Paraphrasing the words of Sir Herbert Risley, “Beneath the manifold diversity of physical and social type, language, custom and religion, which strikes the observer in India, there can still be discerned a certain “underlying uniformity of life from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin”.

Professor Sarkar’s assertions made nearly nine decades ago, continue to remain relevant even today. Although a cabal seeped in colonial cliques threatens to divest India of its Indic indigenous roots, the immutable strain of Indian civilization continues to stand the test of both time and tyranny. India, over many centuries has seen an unceasing influx of immigrants towards whom, she has always been welcoming and hospitable. While some arrived with a curiosity that was pure and genuine, some others made their presence felt with a barbaric intent.

Professor Sarkar provides as an illustration the arrival of the Phoenicians of Biblical times, the Arabs, the Greeks, the Alexandrian Romans, Persians, and Abyssinians who streamed into India to commence a robust system of trade all along the western ports. When the Middle Ages were coming to an end, the lax Western seaboard of India was ripe for penetration by the Portuguese and the Dutch. These intrepid bunch of people pouring into India brought along with them not just wares to trade, but also an inclination and openness to immerse themselves, into India’s cultural mores.

Adventurous outbound escapades, courtesy some powerful Indian rulers, also contributed, in no small measure, to a ‘cross pollination’ of civilizations and conventions. The formidable Chola empire boasting a powerful naval fleet captured the capital of Pegu (Lower Burma) and annexed the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Many Indian rulers colonized the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Borneo, Cambodia, and Thailand. Thus there was an inevitable ‘co-mingling’ of religions. India not only shared her practices and rituals with the colonized, but also absorbed their indigenous observations. This was in stark contrast to the British, who after colonizing India, did their utmost to eviscerate and elide Indian indigenous traditions before substituting them with their own portfolio of Western beliefs and value systems.

A Pan-Indian confluence of ideas, customs and culture, according to Professor Sarkar, birthed a benign embrace of Sanskritization. Despite political and linguistic differences, custom and convention, “a uniform Sanskrit stamp was printed upon the literature and thought of all the provinces of this vast country. There was a unity of religion, philosophy, literary ideas and conventions, and outlook upon life throughout Hindu India.” Among the creeds that have forged the destiny of India over a sustained period of time, four stand out in a remarkably prominent fashion: the Vedic Aryans, the Buddhists, the Muslims and the British. Each of these races have instituted hallmarks distinct in their flavour and unique in their implementation. Such hallmarks have been modified and solidified in lockstep with time itself. So what are the indelible and enduring contributions of the four creeds to the rubric of Indian identity? ‘India Through the Ages” devotes maximum elaboration and elucidation in answering this question.

The Vedic Aryan influence towards a Pan-Indian identity resulted in the following six gifts of Aryans:

1. An elevated model of spirituality channeling even the non-Aryan elements borrowed in the course of that “grand synthesis which is called Hinduism”;
2. Departing from the prevailing extravagances, grotesquery and emotional abandon that was otherwise the prerogative of most artistic and literary creations. This departure resulted in the substitution of ordered imagination in place of haphazardness;
3. A system of grading people into stand-alone, mutually exclusive castes, determined on an analysis of functions as well as supposed ancestry;
4. Bestowing honour upon women and rending asunder feminist institutions like matriarchy and polyandry;
5. The institution of hermitages, which were distinct from the city universities and celibate monasteries of Christian Europe; and
6. Systematic treatises on a variety of disciplines including but not limited to medicine, philosophy, polity, grammar, metrics, law, astronomy, ritual etc. The grammatical treatise of Panini provided the most scientific treatment of a language amongst all.  

The Buddhists who followed the Aryans also contributed their bit to syncretism by offering half a dozen gifts of their own:

1. Buddhism, in the words of Professor Sarkar showcased itself as a ‘popular’ religion characterised by simplicity. Buddhism simply abhorred convoluted rituals and shunned intricacies which otherwise were capable of being mastered only by the priestly class. Buddhism avowedly appealed to the commoner and devised an appropriate method of teaching that took recourse to unassuming parables. Buddhism also birthed worship by congregation;
2. Professor Sarkar argues that the ‘most charming contributions’ of Buddhism to Indian life lay in the domain of sculpture and architecture. While the Vedic Aryans had not devoted much attention to this aspect of society, Buddhism set itself to redefining the architectural history of the land by building and dedicating cave temples. Consequently, this practice was emulated by the Hindus and Jains;
3. Another ingenious creation of Buddhism was the monastic system or the organized order of religious devotees in disciplined communities. A fraternity of monks, bound by a common order and adhering to a universal set of rules, while living in a closely knit community was a new development ushered in by Buddhism;
4. Buddhism established a systematic and intimate contact with geographies outside India leading to a massive proliferation of the religion spanning territories. The journeys of Indian monks and scholars transported Buddhism to foreign countries from the third century B.C. onwards, and” thereafter the converts of these countries looked up to India as a holy land, the cradle of their faith, a pilgrimage to which was the crowning act of a pious householder’s life”;
5. Buddhism also created a copious repository of literature meant for the masses and not targeted at any elite, or privileged section of society;
6. Professor Sarkar also proposes that image-worship was most probably introduced into India by the Buddhists. Conjecturing that the earliest statues of the Buddha were set up as purely commemorative of a great master and preacher, Sarkar goes on to explain that the statutes soon came to be worshipped as representations of the godhead. Houses had to be built to shelter these sacred images and temples arose.

However, just at a time when Buddhism was at the apex of its popularity, the religion was racked by schisms and beset by a warren of competing and caustic belief sets. The unity of the Buddhist agglomeration was broken, as a moral decay resulted from an increased affluence, lethargy and luxury enjoyed by the monks. “The lavish benefactions of Asoka and Kanishka and the position of supreme respect in the State given by these emperors to the Buddhist monks, were in reality a curse rather than a blessing to the faith. In the Sarnath Edict Asoka threatened that monks who introduced schism into the Church would be unfrocked and expelled from the orders, so serious and widespread had the evil become by his time”. All these developments contrived to exacerbate a robust revival of Hinduism. Buddhism gradually disappeared from India getting inextricably and inevitably absorbed in the new Hinduism.

Even before the British colonised India from the late 17^th century, the nation had experienced Islamic colonization. Marauding kings rampaged India with impetuosity, impunity and impudence. But the Muslims also contributed their mite to aid and abet the syncretization of a Pan-India identity in the following ways, as per Professor Sarkar:

1. Facilitating a revival of the Indian navy and sea-borne trade. Akin to China, whose naval fortunes plummeted after the successful cross border expeditions of the brilliant General Zhang Ye, India’s sea faring ventures had more or less declined in tandem with that of the Chola empire;  
2. Muslims also introduced a new style of architecture, and promoted industries of a refined nature (e.g., shawl, inlaying work, kinkhab, muslin, carpet, and so on);
3. A universal lingua franca, popularly called Hindustani or Rekhta, and an official prose style (“mostly the creation of Hindu munshis writing Persian, and even borrowed by the Maratha chitnises for their own vernacular”) was conceptualised;
4. Monotheistic religious revival and Sufism. The Sufi movement conveniently afforded a common platform to the more learned and devout minds among the Hindus and Muslims;
5. An inclusive approach towards cordial co-existence of various religious interests. Akbar’s legacy as an eclectic patron of religions was extended by his great-grandson Dara Shukoh, “who openly declared that he had found the fullest pantheism (tauhid) in the Vedanta only and prepared a Persian translation of fifty of the Upanishads and another work bearing the significant title of Majmua-ulbaharain or ‘the mingling of the two oceans' which explains the technical terms of Hindu pantheism, with their parallels in Sufi phraseology for Persian readers, in order to facilitate the study of the subject by members of both creeds. In short, the popular religious sects founded by our medieval saints and the Sufi philosophy tended to bring the ruling race and the subject people closer together”;
6. An indigenous revenue system based on the Perso-Saracen model imported by the Muslim invaders, and borrowed by the Hindu States;
7. Introduction of gunpowder in warfare and the ascendancy of the cavalry that slowly dismantled the prominence of elephants in the field of battle;
8. Indulgence in aesthetics such as perfumery and introduction of paper, as its Arabic name ‘kaghaz’ universally used in India proves. “Thus, books could be multiplied in a more attractive and durable form than by scratching on palm leaves with a sharp steel point”;
9. Illumination of manuscripts; and
10. Calligraphy

The fourth and final creed completing the syncretism loop represented the promulgation of progressive measures by the British. It is a totally different matter altogether that the reformist bent of the colonial power was more driven by a preservation of self-interest than an exercise in egalitarianism. This facet is addressed by Professor Sarkar in the concluding Chapter of his book. The British in a brazenly inhumane act, deliberately saw to it that over one-third of Indian territory was racked by feudalism. The medieval barbarism of the Nizam Government (82,313 square miles that packed within its confines greater than 16 million people) and the “slothful, amorphous, defenseless political conditions of Kashmir”, being just two startling and striking examples. If one was to weed out the good deeds of the British from their easily discernible misdemeanours, those, according to Professor Sarkar would be:

1. Formation of a secular state with equality for all, irrespective of race or religion;
2. Sowing the seeds for the growth of a burgeoning middle class;
3. Rise of a capitalist class almost rivalling that of Europe in shape, context, content and capability;
4. According dignity to women by encouraging the growth of public opinion and throwing open the doors of educational institutions;
5. Promotion of literacy and the shunning of sectarian violence

But the pernicious philosophy of “Divide at impera” that furthered the cause and objectives of British interests for over two centuries finally met its match at the hands of a unified, obstinate and unrelenting India. An India that sought Renaissance and a freedom from an unforgivable tyranny.

Professor Sarkar strikes a sombre note as he concludes his compelling book with a lament: “the greatest mischief done by the long-wavering struggle for India’s independence against the British conservatism is that the first generation of Indians into whose hands Free India has fallen have acquired a distorted mentality… A false sense of values has been taught to the electorate: to have been held by the English in political detention is proclaimed as a qualification for ministership….”

Alas even seven decades (and counting), after liberating ourselves from the shackles of English oppression, we still seem unable to shrug away the baggage of colonial thought.