role of the

Himalayas in shaping the Indian

environment

India is the only country

that is an ocean named after it right
the Indian Ocean
so obviously India
being a peninsula is a significant
significant factor in the development of
Indian history
so let me begin with Orientalism
I've written the word over there
obviously derived from the word orient
its opposite purported opposite in any
case is something called the oxidant
also known as the West okay and the word
orient itself is actually a rather
jumbled up word if I may put it this way
well because it can mean almost anything
east of the Suez Canal but it's included
the Arab world quite often and in fact
the key texts that we are going to be
reading we're reading short excerpts
from it and that's what I'm going to
discuss today is a book by Edward cyi
the literary critic who died in 2003 he
was a professor at Columbia University
and wrote what possibly is a most
influential book in the humanities in
the second half of the 20th century
possibly certainly one of the three or
four most influential books in the
second half of the 20th century right
add the word orient is also a verb 1
orient oneself
right goes in a particular direction
okay so now the question for us is what
is the Orient and for our purposes of
course we're we're interested in India
and India would have been included in
the Orient the American usage of the
Orient actually has referred largely to
the Far East to China Japan and Korea
principally China and Japan but there
but there have been American usages of
the word Orient which have included
India in it as well now Edwards Sayyed
proposed a certain thesis which is
called Orientalism okay that's not
really the thesis as such but because
the word Orientalism refers to a number
of different things what he wants to
make is an argument of the following
sort all right and to keep this argument
it might just go back to my concluding
remarks on Monday remember where I
started talking to you and I said that
just imagine that you had to think of
ten key words when you were thinking of
Japan and so somebody's mentioned sushi
and I said maybe ramen maybe kimono okay
maybe Toyota Honda so forth and so on
manga manga might be one of them you
know particularly if you go to Southeast
Asia I mean it's manga is Japanese
comics as you know right so they're
these sort of signposts to something
called Japan and we want to probably
avoid having such signposts because what
the signposts do is they essentially
reduce a complex civilization to certain
key elements and there may be a
difficulty in doing that for every
civilization but some but for some
civilizations this enterprise may be
much more hazardous than it may be for
others right so in the case of Japan we
could say that probably it's a very
hazardous enterprise to try to reduce
all of Japan to ten or fifteen or twenty
of these little signposts by which we
try to understand this complex
civilization okay now in the case of
India these signposts would have
included such things as as I said the
Taj Mahal snake charmers right if you're
living in the Diaspora I mean almost
every South Asia and every
Indian certainly they'll probably have
some familiarity with something called a
samosa or Bhangra right these become the
main signposts to something called India
and obviously what we have to try to do
is try to understand what are the
enormous problems in reducing
civilizations to such signposts and now
let me use a little more complex word
essences the study of India right so
before we actually start looking at
something called Indian history we have
to be worried about something else and
what we have to be worried about is how
do we actually study another
civilization all right particularly if
question no it would not necessarily be
any better notwithstanding what Hindu
nationalists might say or what Indian
nationalists might say and might not be
any better because many of these
historians might in fact be replicating
European models of knowledge in their
work okay and this is what Edwards say
in the conclusion of the book which you
are not reading referred to as what he
called second-order Orientalism so let's
say 70 years after independence I mean
India acquired independence in 1947 okay
so you know 60 70 years after
independence you might say that well you
know there's a large body of Indian
historians who are working on India and
they are the primary authorities will
not necessarily for the study of Indian
history
and it may not be because there may
still be replicating European models
European paradigms so then we have to go
back to the 18th century to understand
what Syed's own particular contribution
is going to be to this problem
the study of this problem that is how

Herodotus is a huge amount of fun

frankly okay right okay full of
prejudices but is Herodotus an
Orientalist no not in Sayed sense of the
term because a systematic way of
institutionalizing difference have not
arisen in the 18th century this
systematic form of institutionalizing
difference arose under conditions of
colonialism

okay so Orientalism therefore is an

entire intellectual and cultural
apparatus for discussing defining
evaluating and interpreting the other a
civilization that is not your own
okay and the other interesting thing
about this which is very often not
understood even in many discussions of
Orientalism is it Syed is saying that
when Europeans start writing Indian
history they're writing Indian history
not just for themselves they're not
saying that so you know for example you
have a historian called elphinston and
he writes his huge history of India okay
and we know will I could give you twenty
examples of his histories of that kind
written in the late 18th century or
early 19th century or Alexander Dao
who's writing in the 1770s about
oriental despotism as he calls it now
these people are writing these histories
not just for their own people they're
actually writing these histories for the
Indians because the argument is

we know
India better that Indians know their own
history we know them better than they
know themselves so we are going to
represent India not just okay for
ourselves we are going to represent
India for the Indians all right this is
in essence what Orientalism is about so
therefore

we look at a work of
history and we're looking at many
secondary works I mean there may be some
principal documents principal sources
that you might look at you know you
might look at an inscription written at
a temple in the fourth century BC for
example and that's not what I'm
referring to here what I'm referring to
is the work of interpretation of that
inscription okay that's a secondary
source right so what I what I produce or
the histories that you're reading by
Romila Thapar
these are secondary sources so now the
question is what is the intellectual
epistemological presumption with which a
writer writes his or her work okay
is that work infused by a certain kind
of Orientalism that is the assumption
that I am doing some work of
representation okay which cannot be done
by these people number one and this work
of interpretation is now informed by
certain presuppositions and those
presuppositions obviously arrived from
conditions of hierarchy because in the
18th century obviously a hierarchy is
established between the Europeans and
the Indians right or between the
Europeans and the Arabs there's a
hierarchy that's going to be established
this hierarchy is going to be critical
in shaping the nature of historical work
that's what Edwards say it is saying now
the work has been heavily critiqued by
many who say that I will say either
saying that it's impossible for a
European to offer a fair assessment of
Indian history or Indian civilization or
the Arab world it may be that that
critique is fundamentally true or close
to what Edwards side's position is I
think Sayid is saying in effect that
it's actually very difficult under
conditions of colonialism or neo
colonialism now under conditions of
enormous inequity or power okay and
there is enormous in
your power even today between the west
and the Arab world there's just no
question about it
okay I mean the United States and
contemplate thinking about well should
we be bombing Iraq should we be bombing
Afghanistan should we be bombing Iran I
mean Iran doesn't have the luxury of
thinking that way so there is an
enormous in equity of power let's not
forget that and we're saying there is a
relationship between knowledge and the
knowledge that is produced and the
enormous inequity of power that exists
and that is existed since the 18th
century and as a consequence of this
since the 18th century there has been an
institutionalized form okay in which
representation of the other in this case
the representation of the East or the
Orient has appeared now I'll give you
one illustration to make the argument
very clear okay and this illustration
will reappear all right will reappear

when we come to the 18th century when we

come to that part of history from where
I've drawn this particular illustration
in 1757 there's something called the
Battle of Plassey you'll hear about it
because it's supposed to be the
foundational moment of modern Indian
history right the word battle is a
misnomer frankly but we'll find out
later on why that's not an appropriate
characterization of what happened the
key point is simply this that in 1757
this at the so-called battle lord clive
right or clive let's not dignify him by
calling him Lord that's what he's known
as but Clive okay he is going to defeat
an Indian Nawab navab is a Muslim ruler
in the state of Bengal and this is going
to become the foundation of British rule
in India now the justification for the
British entering into this conflict was
that some months preceding this the
Nawab okay and the Nawab of Bengal his
name is Raja dalla you don't need to
worry
the name right now we'll get to him
later okay someone's preceding this
incident the nawab had apparently
apparently okay confined several hundred
europeans as prisoners in one small room
that incident is called the black hole
of Calcutta the black hole of Calcutta
google it or look up my site and you
will see some information on it now what
is the source for this particular
incident the source for this incident is
one English man by the name of Howell
who claims he was an eyewitness okay as
I'm going to call Howell a he source a
okay six months later another man comes
along we're going to call him be and he
says that this incident took place and
he cites who how because that's the only
source and of course we don't know if
Howe was actually there that's what he
claims that he was there and he saw this
and he saw that when the door was opened
in the morning because several hundred
people had been crammed into a very
small room they suffocated and when the
door opened next morning they fell like
flies okay and this is going to become
partly the justification for the attack
by the British on the nabob okay and the
battle now a couple of years later
another blow comes along we're going to
call him C and C says there are two
sources for this incident a plus B and
then a few months later D comes along
another writer all of them English of
course and he says what now you should
be able to guess what he's going to say
right he says there are actually three
sources three sources but they're not
three sources there's only one supposed
source and these sources are a plus B
plus C right and then you can go and ad
infinitum right so you can go to Z
and it's going to be there 25 sources
right now this is one of the ways in
which Orientalism works iteration
iteration means repetition Orientalism
produces certain devices by which you
interpret the other in our own times
some of you may know this you know
because already this happened about 810
years ago
what I'm referring to but you might have
read about it exactly the same
phenomenon happened in the United States
with respect to Iraq weapons of mass
destruction some bloke called Powell the
Secretary of State Colin Powell gives a
presentation and the UN says ah we've
proven that their weapons of mass
destruction and then like a bunch of
parrots everybody else comes along in
the administration and they say oh yeah
he said that
and then third person comes along and
says ah put Colin Powell and X are
saying that and then of course the next
day someone else comes along sort and so
on and we know that they were no weapons
of mass destruction complete concoction
okay and that's been demonstrate that's
been proven endlessly now in the last
few years how this went about this is
one of the devices okay because or even
some I'm explaining to you in the
abstract now I'm giving you an
illustration of how the work of
interpretation takes place so suddenly a
so in comes along and say something
right and then you know ten other people
repeat that well that doesn't mean that
it's true and in fact one of the ways in
which discourse works if you say
something often enough it might just
become true okay and this is an argument
that was made by somebody who was very
influential in shaping the thought of
Edward Sade a French philosopher by the
name of Foucault right who basically
talks about what he calls truth effects
so that's going to be my last point for
for this portion of my observations
about oralism Foucault says that what
this course does discourse is what we
reduce it could be oral it could be but
here we're looking at written discourse
once this course does is produce not so
much truth necessarily but truth affects
okay so this is what

Orientalism is
going to produce it's going to produce
certain truth effects and it will be for
us to be extremely vigilant when we read
colonial texts in particular or even
when we read modern Indian texts because
many of the modern Indian histories are
based on colonial presuppositions even
when they think they are defying those
presuppositions okay this is what
foreign tourism is about does anybody
have a question it's a relatively
complex matter in some ways but I've
tried to put it to you and in what I
think are terms of clarity you know
there's anybody have any questions about
Orientalism all right now what I want to
do is before I move into the indus indus
valley is i want to just talk to you
very briefly about the physical
geography of india okay um and before we
do that if you could turn your attention
to these three words i've written over
here india okay
india is not that term by which Indians
describe their own country see we have
already got a problem
I mean we're studying the history of
India and we're using a word that
Indians never used themselves to
describe their own land if you go to

Indian postage stamps or Indian currency

notes right because those are the two
reliable places you can go to for
determining how a country defines itself
so now it uses two words on every Indian
postage stamp you'll find two words one
is the word para okay and this is in
Dave Nagre script you know you'll find
out later on what is it they've not
green script it's a script in which
Sanskrit is written in which modern
North Indian languages are written such
as Hindi okay right so you'll find the
word para and you'll find the word India
because of course if they say
parrot uh when the you know when this
letter is going and nowadays nobody's
writing letters it's all internet anyhow
but you know nobody would really know
what parrot is it would be a private
conversation so they use the word India
which is the word that has now been used
of course for several for several
hundred years there are other words by
which this land mass was designated area
Worth area Worth is the land of the
audience okay and there going to be some
real problems there because of course
there are people who are not Aryans and
then the word Aryan is a form of
mystification frankly by now and
particularly after Hitler and World War
two and all of that and the whole
ideology of Aryan supremacy there are
real difficulties in using this word ok
but the designation by which Indians
would have known their own country would
have included the words Bharat okay re
avert the land of the audience and Hindu
Stan Stan means place as in Balochistan
Pakistan whose Becca Stan same ending
right Stan place right so the place of
the Hindus and of course is a real
problem now in this using this word
Hindustan today because we know that
there's a significant percentage of the
population of India which is not
comprised of Hindus they are Sikhs
they're Jane's they're Muslims they're
Buddhists and there have been many other
groups for a very long period of time
but of course you could argue that
perhaps this word is partly justified on
the grounds that perhaps and this is
what we're going to have to see whether
this is the case or not that

most of the
principle contours of Indian history
were shaped by those who would then
later on become known as the Hindus okay
or that in some way this is a substratum
of Indian culture but we have to be
extremely careful about that because we
do not want to elide Hindus into India
in India and to Hindus and imagine that
these are synonymous words not even
remotely right

metropolises
we're not going to look at all of them
for the moment you have a huge mountain
range over here okay and this mountain
range is going to run for several
thousand kilometers the Himalayas okay
the Himalayas
now

the Himalayan region has its own

distinct culture history identity

and
one of the things we cannot do in this
class I'm letting you know right now is
to look at the various cultures that
together comprise this area you know how
in what way is it a distinct region okay
what are the linguistic groups that
flourish over there and we're going to
find that there are connections between
different Himalayan groups right the and
that some of these connections certainly
signify the difference between these
emollient ethnic linguistic cultural
groups and what you're going to find in
the heartland when people speak of the
Heartland in India what they're really
referring to is very often this is one
of those prejudices now here the word
prejudices is different than the word
Orientalism okay they very often are
referring to this portion over here
roughly okay at the river Ganges flows
over here

okay it's called the Ganga in India the

anglicized form is Ganges and this is
where you're going to find the most
fertile land and you're going to find a
large number of cities that this
historically developed along this part
we're going to find that there is a
earlier civilization before the
civilization that develops along the
Ganges okay I'm going to come to that
later on but this is very often what is
referred to as a heartland now there are
many other terms that are used for this
area sometimes it's referred to as a cow
belt for example which is not to say
that they're more cows they're than they
are in the rest of India but but there
is a politics around the cow and the
protection of the cow right and this is
something again that you won't
understand right now but you will
understand it in due course of time when
we get to the audience all right this
portion in the South here okay and it's
not like you can draw a line like that
so you know but but roughly you know
somewhere this portion over here this is
called the Deccan okay South India and
one of the things that distinguishes a
Deccan from North India is that the four
principal languages that you find in the
deck end belong to a different
linguistic group then the language is
spoken in North India all right now the
geography is significant for the
following reasons and then many others
but just one or two things that come to
mind and that you should be aware of is
that the Himalayas introduced a barrier
in some ways between India and the rest
of the world which is not to say that
this barrier could not be infiltrated
because you have got foreigners coming
in to India for a very long period of
time coming in from Central Asia Turkey
West Asia particularly Central Asia and
they're coming through what is called
the Hindu Kush mountains okay which is a
portion of the Himalayas all right so
they're coming there but by and large
we're saying that the Himalayan range
the huge emollient range introduced a
kind of barrier again you know that you
know that
we speak about the Himalayan range we're
speaking about obviously a huge number
of Peaks beginning with obviously
Everest which is which is the tallest
but there are hundreds of Peaks which
are over 20,000 feet in height okay so
the lower foothills or the himalayas
means 10,000 feet or less that's the
lower foothills of the Himalayas all
right that's what you have to bear in
mind now the other interesting thing of
course is that India is a peninsula and
we are going to find that the Europeans
are going to come not through the land
they're going to come by sea that's
going to introduce a new phase in Indian
history this but one of the interesting
things that we have to think about is
what were the kind of linkages that
India had with the rest of the world by
sea okay and this is when now when we
start to get into the Indus Valley
Civilisation we're going to find that
this is going to be exceedingly
important alright so this is roughly
what you should be thinking about all
right now let me move into what is
called the Indus Valley Civilisation
okay and let me begin by saying that you
know if you're looking at the

Indus
Valley Civilisation and when we're going
roughly back to 3,000 BC there are
obviously human settlements in India
long before that okay
the Paleolithic Age as it's called
begins in India somewhere around 7,000
BC roughly around 7000 BC the
Paleolithic Age here refers to the fact
that they were using largely primitive
stone tools okay as opposed to the
Neolithic Age which where they're using
more advanced tools okay and you've got
better stone implements and so on right
so you so we're not looking at this
prehistory which goes back 7,000 BC and
maybe even earlier there is a place in
but they're Pradesh Madhya Pradesh is a
a state in central India okay where they
have found cave paintings that date back
to roughly 15,000 years 50
twenty thousand years so we're not
looking at the history history of human
settlements in India right from the
outset
 the reason we go to the Indus
Valley Civilisation is that this is the
first period a for which we have
sufficiently concrete evidence

you're going to
find the development of cities and
that's crucial because there is a
particular relationship between cities
and civilization all right so this is
why we go to something called the Indus
Valley Civilisation now the Indus Valley
Civilisation so if you go back to this
map not a great map obviously here but
just to give you some idea is going to
develop along the northwest part of
India here the northwest part of India
and there's a river here called the
Indus okay the river in this it has
number of tributaries one of its
principal tributaries is a river called
the Ravi and for those of you who have
some familiarity with with India today
this land is the area that we call
partly the Punjab and then partly it's
in Pakistan today
all right so the Indus Valley
Civilisation develops along the Indus
River okay and as I said it flows
through over here and is gone it
eventually empties out into the
he river empties out into the and there are these
tributaries one of which is a Ravi and
this is important because we're going to
find that there are two cities which are
of supreme importance now before I tell
you a little bit about these two cities
which are actually quite identical few
differences here and there but very
similar these two cities these cities
their existence was largely an
known until the early part of the 20th
century in 1926 they started doing
excavations and before that the general
view was that the earliest Indian cities
had developed along the Gangetic plain
so remember I'd mentioned to you the
river Ganga also known as the Ganges and
that plane that that that area is called
the Gangetic plain named after the river
Ganges
okay the general idea was that the first
Indian cities had developed along the
Gangetic plain a city called Patna and
then a city which today is known as
bananas or Varanasi okay it's got two
different two or three different names
it's got another name as well called
kashi but but it's usually it's known as
Banaras or Varanasi right so a general
impression used to be until these
excavations were done in the 1920s that
the earliest Indian cities had developed
along the Gangetic plain which is a very
fertile area and then in 1920s our
understanding of the Indian past began
to change very significantly okay with
the discovery in particular of two
cities okay one of them is called
Harappa and the other one is called
mohenjo-daro now let me as a little
footnote say something here before I
move to a substantive discussion of that
both these sites are today in Pakistan
okay and it's not insignificant it's not
insignificant because if you read
Pakistani histories they'll tell you
that the history of Pakistan goes back
to 5000 years now there's something
rather funny about that if you think
about it because Pakistan is created in
1947 but of course there are some sites
which now are in Pakistan these happen
to be the oldest sites of the Indus
Valley Civilisation so therefore the
Pakistani claim is that Pakistan's
history in fact is older than the
history of India or the Pakistan is
carved out of India
in 1947 right and the reason I mentioned
this is because for a moment before we
start discussing Indus Valley
Civilisation I want you to keep in mind
a distinction between three things a
nation a nation state and a civilization
these three are quite different things
as a nation state India is a history
that goes back to 1947
that's when India becomes a nation state
okay and what is by the way the
definition of a nation state does
anybody want to venture a guess whoa how
how do you define a nation state sorry
Constitution did I hear the word
Constitution the room is so big that I
can't always tell where the where it's
coming from Constitution right
okay maybe Constitution might be one one
way to think of it yeah and what is it
yes a sense of national identity but
okay so okay backed up by certain kind
of infrastructure right what is a
nation-state have the ability to do that
let's say a nation may not have in other
words let me ask you this what is a
distinction between a nation and a
nation state can you think of a people
who are a nation but are not a nation
state yeah oh
okay

so can you give me an illustration of a

nation that's not a nation-state
Palestine

fine that that would be

probably the first example that would
come to mind for most people right
because the Palestinians have some kind
of shared history some kind of notion of
a shared pass they're all these
mystifying things such as blood you know
okay which go into the Constitution or
what we call a nation one way to think
about
a nation-state is a nation-state
as a nation with an army and a navy okay
basically muscle power right and then
and then we get into such things as
Constitution the enforcement of borders
right passports so forth and so on yes
sovereignty yeah yeah so well
sovereignty sovereignty would be another
way to look at it okay so if we're
looking at if you're looking at India
we're saying that
let's keep one thing in mind its history
as a nation-state is very very recent
going back to 1947
now when the British come to India they
are quite convinced that there is no
such thing as a nation called India the
quite convinced of that and this is
going to be one of the grounds on which
they are going to try to impose a
certain rule because they're going to
try to say that well there are all these
people they're called Bengalis and
Gujaratis and Punjabis and Tamilians
right and what makes them all gel
together right and by the way that's not
quite the same as seeing the people who
are from Florida and they're people from
Massachusetts not at all it's very
different because you have to keep in
mind that these people call Bengalis and
Punjabis and Tamilians
okay and so over them so on right that
all of these have very distinct
linguistic
identities as well many of the languages
that we are speaking of here because
Gujarati is not only a group of people
it's also a language
a Bengali is a person but Bengali is
also a language and many of these
languages have histories that go back
hundreds of years they have distinct
literary traditions that go back several
hundred years all right so the British
view is that there is no such thing as
an Indian nation and of course is no
nation-state a nation-state is a modern
creation and even in Europe
nation-states are relatively new
relatively I mean you have to go back to
the 17th century to something called the
Treaty of Westphalia which is going to
inaugurate the nation-state system and
then you have something called a
civilization ok
and of course India can be spoken of as
a civilization right and then we're
going to have to see what are the
various consequences of using this
particular word what are the
ramifications of speaking of India as a
civilization now in Pakistan and so this
is why I have been led to this because
this has become a very interesting site
of contention you see the Hindu
nationalists in India are extremely
upset about the fact that the two most
well known sites of the Indus Valley
Civilisation which is the earliest
civilization frankly of any consequence
in India now happen to be in a nation
state called Pakistan so who's going to
claim the legacy of the Indus Valley
Civilization
this is where you get into the politics
of history right and we shouldn't assume
by the way that you can divorce the
politics of history from history itself
ok so this is why I'm mentioning this as
a little footnote before we get into a
description of what is enders valley
civilization right now the Indus Valley
Civilization began roughly around 3
3,000 BCE ok before the Common Era
so about 5000 years ago and there it has
distinct phases which I'll get into
later on

some very interesting features of this

civilization one it's an urban
civilization and it's exceedingly
important to keep that in mind because
throughout the colonial period and this
is where Orientalism comes in the
impression that was sought to be
conveyed by the British was that India
had always been a predominantly rural
civilization in fact the Indus Valley
Civilization was a highly urban
civilization it's two major cities
Harappa and mohenjo-daro both developed
along the banks of rivers in an
environment that is very dry and arid
okay now it raises interesting questions
you know why did why did these
civilizations develop along these cities
develop along these rivers in such a dry
and arid environment there is by the way
a comparable example elsewhere in the
world which would be the Nile and the
Tigris Euphrates complex you've got
similarly dry arid kind of environments
right and civilization developing along
the river and then lots of reasons the
river is one a source of fish a source
of food secondly if they were trying to
develop a civilization in the interior
it would probably have entailed the
clearing of dense jungles now here they
didn't really have to do much clearing
it's a dry arid environment in order to
do by the way clearing of dense jungles
you need a plough which they didn't
really have okay so now we are beginning
to see what are some of the features of
this civilization it develops an urban
civilization and I haven't described the
features of that so what are the
features of this urban civilization what
makes it orbán you've got cities

extremely good Town Planning

white streets with subsidiary lanes the
streets meeting at right-angles in fact
some historians have argued and I
actually share that view that the Town
Planning that was displayed by Harappa
and mohenjo-daro both these cities are
in ruins by the way but you can tell
quite a bit from the ruins that the Town
Planning displayed by these cities is
probably better than the town planning
of most Indian cities even today no
exaggeration certainly when it comes to
switch and disposal of sewage because if
you've been in India and have you been
in many other parts of the world like
India you know that it's absolute mess
when the monsoon rains come down they
have no idea what to do with it okay
now 100 are oh and Harappa had extremely
good sewage from what we can tell sewage
disposal from what we can tell from the
structure of the cities they use bricks

these bricks were produced on the fast

wheel all these bricks are of extremely
regular size so not irregular in size
standard uniform size produce in a kiln
and the kale is of a few kilometers away
from the city okay now these are some of
the features we've run out of time I'm
going to obviously continue this
discussion of the Indus Valley
Civilisation and what I'm going to do is
I'm going to focus a on its urban
features its links with other parts of
the world and what we can say about some
of the people there