Indian
historians in recent times have often talked about how Islamic invaders were
easily able to conquer India. They also talk about the Islamic supremacy that enabled
them to outbeat the Indian rulers who still used primitive methods of warfare.
While the Indian rulers used primarily the elephants as their conveyance, their
weapons still comprised of bows, arrows, swords or hand to hand combat. On the
other hand, the Islamic rulers had got hold of the ammunition and gunpowder
technology which enabled them to avoid hand to hand combat thus an advantage
over the Hindus. Further it was claimed that cavalry power of the Muslims
easily could outperform the Hindu elephant battalions.
There is no
doubt, there is some truth in the same. The Hindu rulers did not venture into
accessing advances in war. They perhaps felt no need of doing so. It was only
in the later centuries that the Hindu rulers began to keep pace with the Muslim
conquerors. In fact, in 1556, as Hemu marshalled his forces against Akbar, he
used elephant as his conveyance rather than a horse. It was Maharana Pratap
whose horse Chetak immortalized the beginning of cavalry a few years later.
There is another
discussion that keeps happening on the effortless conquest of Hindu India at
the hands of Islamic rulers. It was virtually talked about as the lack of Hindu
unity that undid them. To the left and liberal historians and thinkers, this
was a manifestation of Hinduism not being a single religion but set of
amorphous religious loosely bounded. This serves them as a significant mark as
they sought to divide Hindus on caste lines. This made their task easier as
they sought to project Dalits, Adivasis or Dravidians as someone outside of the
Hindu fold. In their mission against deracinating of Hindus and creating a
state as imagined by themselves, these narratives perhaps served them quite a
useful purpose.
Yet there is
another angle to the story. There were numerous stories on Hindu resistance to
Islam which lie untold and forgotten buried in deep caves of time. Each and
every India town or region perhaps have their own heroes or heroines who stood
steadfast against the Islamic rulers as they defended their homeland. They were
defeated but to many an Islamic ruler, these were pyrrhic victories. Islam had
conquered North Africa including Egypt, Mediterrnean including Syria within a
few decades of the death of Prophet. In fact they had conquered Spain by the
early part of the eighth century which they held till the latter half of the
fifteenth century. They were stopped in Europe a couple of occasion just as
they found themselves unable to penetrate India. They might have penetrated
Sindh early, but even Kabul took a couple of centuries before its fall. Mahmud
of Ghazni has often been described as someone interested in India’s wealth than
a pursuit of Jihad but this could very well have been an outcome of his inability
to conquer territory that forced to make certain trade-offs. It was only in
1192 that Delhi finally fell to Mohammad Ghur and it was few years later that
the Slave dynasty was established. Yet barring Mughals, hardly any Islamic
dynasties were able to rule beyond a few decades before giving way to another
dynasty. The resistance of Hindus might have been untold, but in recent times
has been gaining traction as symbolizing Hindu bravery.
Without doubt,
it needs to be celebrated and stories told to future generations. However, a
question naturally creeps into the mind whether this is sufficient. It is one
thing to celebrate Hindu resistance but another thing to act in denial on the
loss of Hindu territory to Muslims. Hindu reaches were well into the West of
Kabul or the east of Jakarta. Yet all that remains today is the country of
India as having come to existence on August 15 1947. It is moot to discuss why
India has lost territories. Hindus were brave, defenced strongly to their last
blood, jauhars happened, yet the result was something of loss. A loss meant a
loss. The answer to an extent lay in the strategic thinking of the Hindu
rulers, something keeps on continuing till date.
In the post “Hinduism
in Global Digital Power Calculus”, some discussion has happened at some length
on these issues. The power structures of Hinduism were generally geared
inwards. They hardly had a need before the Islamic conquests on turning abroad.
Apparently, the lack of advances in war technology was primarily due to lack of
need to develop so. India hardly had faced invaders in the few centuries
leading up to the beginning of Islamic conquest. There was virtually no need
for them. No doubt, there were many battles within Indian land, but in terms of
war technology, all were perhaps equal. There would have been perhaps no
incentive to break the Prisoner’s Dilemma so as to speak.
As the above
cited post mentions, the Islamic invasion while one part did lead to battles,
yet at the societal, community or personal level, they led to inward looking ‘Dodger’
strategy, something discussed in the said post. In fact, those instances of
bravery again reflected a defensive mindset rather than an offensive mindset.
India, maybe rightly so, had prided itself as someone who has not conquered lands.
For the millennium long Islamic and Christian rule, the Indic responses have
taken shape of either dodging the core or defending as the case might be.
However, this turns into a liability when confronted with others who are not
willing to follow these rules or conventions.
In the current
day too, Indian responses whether against Pakistan or China have been defensive
or reactive. Rarely that have morphed into something of an offensive. Without
an offensive strategic dimension, the Indic resistance as we talk about will
continue to remain just merely talked about. It must be pointed out that
throughout world, nobody cares for the second place. It is the winner alone who
is talked about. As Indian right wing thinkers rekindle those lost tales of Hindu resistance agains
the Islamic rule, it must be pointed out that tales are only written by the
winners and thus rational to expect these tales to be buried under deep snow. If
these tales have to flourish, it is time that India builds on its offensive and
create a new image for itself. Superpowers never arise without war or conquest.
It is time India remembers the same.
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