Speculations on the role of religion and casteism in the decline and stagnation of Indian Civilization.

It is very typical of the stock opinion among the Indian and Hindu intelligentsia to suppose and believe that the onset of the decline of Indian civilization began with the British conquest of India. British colonialism of India, as the chief culprit of the demise of a  'glorious' continuing civilization that started with the era or the age of the Vedas, most probably carries greater weight among the sections of public opinion than that of the era of Mughal rule. This can be made out easily, though curiously Mughals ruled the country much longer than the British.

The British with their 150 years of colonialism made a far greater impact on the social and national psyche of India than the Mughals and other Islamic invaders before them. The end of British rule also saw the end of monarchies and other formal feudalistic structures that had always existed and presided over India, both before and during the British rule.  British rule, in the days of their early formation and by the end of the 1857 uprising had effectively ended monarchies, though it allowed the existence of  feudalistic structures like small Rajah's, Subedars and Nizams in a nominal and weak form  of vassalage.

The end of monarchies and other formal feudalistic structures delivered the greatest body blow to the image of continuity and 'grandeur' of Indian civilization as it is pictured and imagined in the nostalgic recollection of the average Indian.

The brief successes of the Maratha, Rajput and Sikh monarchies and fiefdoms in interrupting and weakening Mughal hegemony in most of Indian subcontinent, also provided a false impression of the revival of an Indian civilization and polity that could dispel the scourge of frequent invasions and long periods of subjugation.


 One of the meanings or definitions of Civilization refers to it as:
  "An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions."

 Another one defines it as a:
"Type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome."

 Seen in this context Indian civilization that began in the Indus River Valley and continued through the onset and settlement of  Vedic tribes in the Gangetic plains and ended with the British conquest and colonization of the Indian subcontinent can be termed as a great and ancient civilization.

How much ever most of the public intellectual opinion may disagree with this or dispute it, there is little doubt that the Indian civilization just like the civilizations before and after it like the Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Persian and Roman civilizations, stagnated and declined.

While most people tend to blame the Mughals and the British for the troubles of the Indian civilization, the hypothesis and argument of this post is that the stagnation and decline of Indian ancient regime began long before that. The additional argument that this post will seek to explore is the role of feudalism, religion and casteism in contributing to the terminal decline of pre-republican Indian nation and society.

I have tried to put forth this argument in a partial form in the article "Hindu Caste Apologetics and culpability of pre-Adi Sankara era". But in this post I will try to present more detailed arguments for that hypothesis.

In the opinion of DD Kosambi, a much better clarity of the chronology of Indian History emerged with Alexander’s invasion of India around 326 BCE and the onset of Mauryan Empire from 321 BCE onwards, the timeline for testing this conjecture or hypothesis should be 350 BCE to 850 CE  (Adi Sankara is estimated to have died around 820 CE).

I am positing 850 - 900 CE as the outer limit of the peaking and tapering off of the Indian civilization  since around that time Buddhism almost totally vanished or was banished from India and the kind of regressive religious variants of Vedic and Puranic Hinduism that we are still witnessing today was gaining a firm foothold.

Another reason for proposing this hypothesis of the peaking/tapering of the Indian civilization is the decline in science and absence of any prominent scientists after Aryabhatta-II. One exception to this is Bhaskaracharya, also known as Bhaskara-II, who lived in AD 1114 – AD 1185. This exception may perhaps prove the rule of the assumption of the decline of science and empirical study after the decline of Buddhism. While one cannot rule out coincidences and favorable confluence of apolitical and social factors, it does seem that Mauryan and Gupta periods which were very conducive to the development of science and scientists, were also periods when Buddhism and Jainism were patronized and enjoyed substantial royal support.

The Gupta age is controversial in the sense that while Gupta monarchs were not known to be hostile to Buddhism and Jainism, their clear adoption of Vaishnavism and greater patronage of  the Vedic priestly class via land grants and other means  may have sowed the seeds of the Brahminical counter-revolution against Buddhism, that is alleged to have begun in the era of the Sungas. The counter-revolution against Buddhism may have been an interrupted or punctuated one in the era of Sungas and Guptas, but it looks to have gained greater force in the post-Gupta age, as feudalism that took root in the Gupta era continued even in the Harsha empire with the continuation of the model of land grants to elite classes and use of feudatories and vassals like Samantas, Mahasamantas etc. This seems to have  ensured the stratification of caste system and exclusion of sudras of which Hueng Tsang provides accounts in his travelogues.  This may account to some extent, for the puzzle of why Harsha empire despite its patronage of Buddhism, failed to check the power of Brahmin/Hindu resurgence.

It needs to be noted that other accounts may dispute this timeline of the disappearance and/or banishment of Buddhism from India. Some sources place this event to have happened between the 12th and 13th Century CE. But this estimation does not seem credible, since it uses the event of the   Islamic vandalism of the Nalanda University and massacre of monks there as a watershed or seminal event in the end of Buddhism. The existence or the popularity of Nalanda University does not by itself prove that Buddhism was a religious force in those times. As an institution of religious and  higher studies and learning, it seemed to have enough diversity in its student and teaching population to be not really termed as a completely Buddhist relic. Besides one of the first patrons of the Nalanda University is reported to be a monarch of the Gupta dynasty, who also started the construction of this University.

Going by the version of the account of the state of Buddhism in the 7th Century, provided by the Chinese traveller and chronicler Huen Tsang, it would be more reasonable to speculate that the decline of this system accelerated after the end of the reign of Harsha and may have been on its last legs by the time of Adi Sankara.

Another source of verification for this hypothesis is Al-Beruni's work on history called the 'Indica'. Quoting from the preface to that work:

"India, as far as known to Alberuni, was Brahmanic, not Buddhistic. In the first half of the eleventh century all traces of Buddhism in Central Asia, Khurasan, Afghanistan, and North-Western India seem to have disappeared; and it is a remarkable fact that a man of the inquisitive mind of Alberuni knew scarcely anything at all about Buddhism, nor had any means for procuring information on the subject. His notes on Buddhism are very scanty, all derived from the book of Eranshahri, who, in his turn, had copied the book of one Zurkan, and this book he seems to indicate to have been a bad one."

The major monarchies in this period in the North though to the Deccan plateau were :

• Nanda Dynasty (343 BCE to 321 BCE)
• Maurya Dynasty (321 BCE to 185 BCE)
• Shunga- Kanva Dynasty (185 BCE to 26 BCE)
• Kushan Dynasty (30 CE to 230 CE)
• Gupta Dynasty   (320 CE to 540 CE)
• Satavahana Dynasty (230 BCE to 200 CE)
• Chalukyas (543CE – 753CE) 
• Harshavardhana (606 CE – 647 CE)
• Pallava Dynasty (400 CE – 900 CE)

Many sources record the first Islamic invasion of the Indian subcontinent to have happened in the year 712 CE. But it appears that the first wave of invasions and brutalities that eventually resulted in the Muslim/Mughal subjugation of India, occurred sometime around 998 CE. These invasions continued in waves till Babur finally laid the foundations of Mughal rule in India.

It may be noticed from the above list of major dynasties and their timelines that there are only 2 major dynasties with presence in both mid-western and South India. The Pallava dynasty may have ruled what is Tamil Nadu and Andhra of today (with some parts of Kerala).  The monarchies of South India were longer lasting and more stable as distance and Vindhyas probably sheltered them from  invaders from the north and west of the Himalayas.

Surely Northern India was the epicenter of the tumult and ravages of the initial Greek, Hun, Indo-Bactrian and then the repeated Muslim Invasions that finally took a heavy toll on the growth and progress of Indian civilization.

While this is debatable, it does appear that most invasions prior to Islamic conquests other than Alexander short-lived conquest of North India, were in some way or the other assimilative since the invading clans/tribes whether it be Aryans, Kushans, Indo-Bactrians to a major extent or the Huns to a lesser extent, adopted some of the ways and traits of their land of conquest.  But this feature was conspicuously absent from the attitude of the Islamic invaders who carried out repeated incursions for loot and plunder as a method and also possible strategic response to the resistance from the Rajputs.

It may be plausible to further speculate that the assimilative nature of prior non-Islamic invasions induced a sense of complacency in the political and social culture of early Medieval India that failed to apprehend the rapacious and philistine motives of  Islamic invasions.

While some sources attribute ahimsa and pacifist doctrines of Jainist/Buddhist  system which were patronized by some later Gupta monarchs to explain the weakening and disintegration of the Gupta Empire, it seems simplistic and naïve if it were compared to be overall trend of decline of  Jainist/Buddhist foot-print in India starting with the end of Sunga era.  The resurgence of Hinduism in its Puranic and Vaishnavavite avatars which won more royal patrons than the Jainist/Buddhist duo, and had success in progressively displacing the latter's circle of influence both from the royal patronage networks and larger social consciousness, seems a more plausible hypothesis which shows the prolonged under-current of religious tension and warfare that ended up weakening the obviously progressive and egalitarian systems of Jainism and Buddhism and conceded the social space to Hinduism that only perpetuated greater inequality among social classes by its doctrinal support of feudalism and privilege structures.
 

We must also be mindful that most histories of these periods or even later are not focused much on their prevailing social taxonomy and its discontents, but more on the military exploits and conquests of their royal heroes. These chronicles may measure the wealth of the kingdom and its prosperity and not necessarily its dispersion and the extent of general poverty. Just because these eras were more successful and prosperous as compared the Mediaeval eras before or during   Muslim rule does not mean that there were no social inequalities and crises in those times.

So casteist stratification and its vile consequences did not suddenly spring upon us in the Post-Gupta era. It has been a social evolution in the making as some of Hindu intelligentsia concede, but a perverse, retrogressive and degrading one that started centuries ago.

Ironically the roots, basis and foundations of India’s terminal decline were most probably laid in the ‘Golden Age‘ of the Guptas, which is the toast of Hindutva pride. This is of course a long story and not easy to grasp and needs some perspective in sociology and also the somewhat counter-intuitive hypothesis that actual events and their recognition in public consciousness are  always lagging their underlying trends in social and cultural mood settings and milieu.
 

The prosperity, progress and relative stability of the Gupta era was masking the subtle yet consolidating undercurrents of revivalism of an orthodox and ritualistic Vedic religion in the form of

• Resurrection and rehabilitation of the priestly Brahmin class
• Growing proximity of the Brahmin class to the royalty. This was a continuation of the trend begun in the Sunga era, kicked off by the shrewd and crafty Patanjali of the ‘Yoga Sutras’ fame.
• Proliferation of Dharma Shastra texts, again probably inspired by much celebrated Manava Dharmasastra or Manusmriti (The generally accepted date of 150-100 BCE for Manusmriti places it in the Sunga period)
• Revival of Vedic ritualism with resumption of Yagnas like the Rajasuya Yagna and the like
• Composition of additional Puranas, interpolations and extensions to the Maha-puranas (like Bhagavata Purana)
• Very significantly the improvisation of the Bhagavad Gita, which laid the formal theological basis for caste-based and sectarian discrimination as a spiritual philosophy (Quite likely, its composition is speculated to have begun in the Sunga era)

When the Gupta era eventually declined and ended, Brahmanism had taken a vice-like grip on Indian culture and society, with the royal class and the Brahmin elite colluding to keep the masses in perpetual submission and ignorance, in the immediately succeeding centuries.

Some of the references used in the above post:

Science in Ancient India

Ancient Indian Scientists

Why Science Declined In Ancient India?

FROM MONGOLS TO MUGHALS:RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE IN INDIA 9TH-18TH CENTURIES

Factors contributing to disappearance of Buddhism from India