India is an outlier. Nowhere else is there a country teeming with such intricate and rich culture, millennia of priceless history, and a correspondingly unshakeable connection with its past. It is my contention that any understanding of Indian civilisations begins with its dynamic nature; Indian civilisations are not a discrete, closed book, but a fiercely continuous story that is being written and re-written every day. Accordingly, the past is not a remote object under clinical observation. Instead, it is a multi-faceted, eristic architect of our lived present.

                This paper presents arguments in favour of the statement that “understanding Indian civilisations involves a perception of the past as also of the past’s presence in the present.” It seeks to justify the statement by answering two questions: first, what considerations must be made when attempting to understand Indian civilisations and how is the past perceived?; and second, what position does the past occupy in the present?

             First, broaching what it means to understand Indian Civilisations and the complications that arise with it, is intimately involved with the question of howwe have access to the past in the first place. For example, Jains maintained handwritten manuscripts of their philosophy and tradition in warehouses called ‘bhandars’ that are worshipped as sacred once a year. Or, in the Maruti temple of Ujjan, there is a lengthy inscription from the 20^th Century that depicts several thousand years of history – not just mythological or religious history, but crucially, archaeological history of the site (Alain, 2013). In both cases, we can see how the past was valorised by communities who preserved knowledge about their ancestors. The great import the community attached to this preservation makes our understanding of it clear and reliable.  

               However, the question of access gets complicated when one considers that archaeological ‘discoveries’ are neither linear nor perfectly executed, since the past is not exclusively acted upon by its own descendants, but by an array of cultures, political regimes and forces both internal and external. The Harappan Civilisation’s careful excavation by John Marshall had the robust infrastructure and funding that it did only due to what was, in essence, a public relations initiative to sanitise the British’s colonial image from that of destruction and vandalism to one of culture and “enlightenment” (Lahiri, 2003). While this may not change the veracity of theories and deductions made by British colonialists, it highlights how acquiring information about Indian civilisations is a contentious process unto itself – the way information is retrieved, interpreted and spread plays a crucial role in how we understand it. Subjective agents make conscious decisions about how to spend limited resources (human, economic) to most suitably paint a picture of ancient society.

                 Michael Clasquin demonstrated the risks of this human intervention by tracing why ancient India is charged with not being humorous by the popular imagination (2001). He argues that this conception is largely a result of the fact that much of ancient India’s humour was lost in translation due to its obscenity or erotic overtones that were removed by colonial, Christian repression. In other words, the specious consensus that there was no humour in old India falls apart when the jokes that were redacted and innuendos that were censored by the moralising Christian historians are registered. These ambitions of censorship were driven by scholars with the intent to present Indian literature as ‘serious.’ Due to this normative assessment made by Christians that the jokes were vulgar or crass, when the poor preservation technology that existed for texts meant that trade-offs had to be made, it was humour that had to be sacrificed at the feet of ‘serious’ literature.

                     This exhibits how the past has limited agency in controlling its legacy beyond a certain point, and our understanding is manufactured by sources which cannot be unequivocally declared objective. Another instance of this is the treasured memory of Kabir, remembered as a champion of Hindu-Muslim unity. However, reading his works we see he was, in fact, “downright confrontational” towards communalism, which raises doubt as to whether it was a palatable, conciliatory religious unity that he believed in, or whether – as contemporary readers now suspect –  he rejected the futile, performative preaching of both religions (Hawley, 1996). Further, in the movie, “Kabir Khada Bazaar Mein – Journeys with Sacred and Secular Kabir,” the past is interwoven with the present such that the schism between Kabir’s life and his legacy is exposed (2008).  The film shows his deification and appropriation by groups with vested interests in a way that was far from what the poet would have wanted.

                          Understanding Indian civilisations requires an effort to understand the processes of uncovering history, and not just accepting information at face value. Our perception of the past can adhere to or differ from reality gone by, and the following example of Ashokan edicts speaks to the former possibility, while that of the Harappan civilisation addresses the latter.

                           Ashoka’s edits prescribe things like “proper behaviour…respect… generosity…one benefits in this world and gains great merit in the next by giving the gift of Dhamma” (Allen, 2012). It was iconoclastic for a ruler to view a watershed victory as a defeat, the way King Ashoka did in the Battle of Kalinga. His turn to religion and spirituality remains revolutionary by any historical standards. History, here, is truly glorious; a riveting inspiration and remarkable story. Additionally, Ashoka’s edicts provide a seminal model for direct communication with your population (not dissimilar from Modi’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’) and his earnest teachings of Dhamma depict a rare, tolerant theological doctrine of governance.

              In other instances, however, history can be susceptible to embellishment of the past through psychology’s rosy retrospective view which selectively filters facts. Charles Masson (or as he was really named, James Lewis) reported that people living around what was once the Harappan Civilisation believed it had died out because of the “lust and crimes” of its ruler (Lahiri, 2003). Naturally, technology and archaeology have proved this to be untrue, yet it showcases the ability of the past to be sustained in the minds of people despite unconvincing “evidence” to back up the claim. Therefore our perception of the past becomes almost as important as the actual chain of events. In conclusion, the collective understanding of Indian Civilisations is a continuous process informed by the modality of the past’s retrieval, and conditioned by zeitgeist attitudes. It is forever undergoing renovation and evolution.

                  Now, on the second question I laid out, our relationship with the past is at once curious and defining. Relics and other historical fossils breathe life into the everyday existence of traditions and beliefs; “these material traces are not seen as the dead past, instead they are frequently viewed as an integral part of the present” (Lahiri, 2013). In fact, these traditions and local religious practices provide a renewed meaning and purpose to the ancient past.

             According to the Mahabharata, a sacrifice to avenge a death caused by a serpent sovereign allegedly took place in Sihi, which spurred a lasting tradition of making snake offerings and belief in antidotes to poison made of the slag found at the same village mound. The contemporary curative properties of the slag can directly be liked with the folklore of the locals. Other now-crumbling deities are diligently maintained due to their mythical origins in epics like the Ramayana as some testament to the legend’s veracity, such as with Ballabgarh. These deities and relics are preserved by a community who worships them despite commandments from scripture that explicitly condemn the idol worship of imperfect, aged idols. It is my contention that people tend to defy such religious taboos because of how connected they are with the idea of the past’s beautiful breadcrumbs as proof and legitimacy for their oft-abstract mythologies. The community identifies with relics and this protects the past in a secure blanket of cultural habit that is difficult to erode in India.

               While Sihi shows the present rendering resilience unto the past, the history of a relic can even be at odds with the present. In a country as heterogeneous yet composite as India, the propensity that several archaeological sites and objects have a variety of histories, either from a range of cultures that occupied the same place at different points in time, or through coterminous cultural interaction, is notably high. In Discovery of India, Nehru describes India as a palimpsest upon which multiple inscriptions were carved in succession, yet, no layer erased or overcame the previous layer entirely (1946). Although this notion of pluralistic histories without competitive ones is poetically captured by Nehru, the unfortunate reality is not always quite as tolerant as that.

               Religion, artists, architects, and politics are four realms whose works and pedagogies indubitably constitute the clearest and most impactful conversations with the past that exist today. A Buddhist disciple, Maha Mogalana, was believed to be born around the Jagdishpur mound southwest of Nalanda in Bihar, evidenced by the aesthetically adroit Buddhist sculpture found very close by (Lahiri, 2013). The statue depicts Buddha under a tree, resisting temptation despite the alluring women placed all around him. However, this sculpture was termed “Rukmini” by Jagdishpur’s locals, who saw it as a woman, and smeared it with the propitious offering of goat’s blood. The intended significance of the sculpture is being entirely subverted by the present and its treatment is diametrically opposed to the teachings of nonviolence and respect for all living beings that Buddhism espouses.

                   In the world of art, stylistic and substantive histories are frequently evoked in the present. In the early 1900s, artist Abindranath created captivating paintings by drawing on the elements of the past like the Mughal rule, Hindu goddesses and Buddhism. A walk around old Delhi even today will demonstrate how architecture borrows from the past with Buddhist domes and Mughlai arches. As for politics, the British began the process of governing with a sensitivity to and consciousness of Indian history that endures today – George V made Delhi the capital of the Raj in 1911 in deference to the historic significance of the city.

                  Progressing chronologically, during the freedom struggle, it became clear that the historical formation of identities would play a key role in how Free India was realised. At this juncture, it becomes inescapable to ask: what does it mean to be an Indian, and how, if at all, is this identity constructed by the past?

               India tried to consolidate its multiple religious, ethnic, caste, and tribal groups to provide some cogent Indian identity. The vision of plurality with vibrant co-existence and “untidy, improvising” diversity is famously provided by the likes of Nehru and Tagore, who believed that the “shared historical past of cultural mixing” was the basis of ‘Indian-ness,’ not membership of a particular religious or ethnic group. It is dangerously incomplete to ‘understand’ Indian civilisations with fixed archetypes of the past like Muslim invader and Hindu purity. Instead, “we need to see India not as a civilisation but as a crossroads, as a space open to external influences rather than a simple exporter of cultures” (Subrahmanyam, 2013). This syncretic framework allows nationalism to emerge from a diverse chimera of cultural forces that are, in turn, influenced by the cultural landscape of the world. Centuries before the term was even in our vocabularies, India has represented the acme of globalisation in terms of diffusion of heritage intra and internationally.

                   This cosmopolitan, permissive view of the past was, and is met with opposition from exclusionists whose idea of India is neat, singular and saffron (Khilnani, 1997). India’s political present is plagued with self-proclaimed puritanical gatekeepers of nationalism whose narrative relies on “build[ing] itself up by defaming and ‘othering’ certain histories” (Subrahmanyam, 2013). In a country embroiled in communalism and casteism, the past can be the most oppressive tool in political warfare. Be it defining moments like the destruction of the Babri Masjid, or in the common rhetoric of campaign speeches in 2019, “History is brought in as an attempt to provide a justification from the past” for acts in the present (Thapar, 2014).

                    As we reconcile our intersectional identities and navigate the considerations involved in understanding our past, to paraphrase Sunil Khilnani: India’s vast and various histories have, for the first time, given the present generation of Indians the responsibility to choose between them (1997). In making this choice, it is our duty to sieve through the past painted on the pages of ancient civilisations and acknowledge our hand in writing new history every day. I pray we choose wisely.

Works Cited

Charles Allen. 2012. Ashoka. London: Little Brown. Chapters 7 and 8.

John Stratton Hawley. 2005. Three Bhakti Voices – Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in their Times and Ours. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Michel Clasquin (2001): Real Buddhas Don’t Laugh: Attitudes towards Humour and Laughter in Ancient India and China, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 7:1, 97-116

Nayanjot Lahiri. 2003. ‘The Discovery of the Indus Civilization: Early Intuitions and Unknown Reports, 1826-1920’ in Biswamoy Pati, Bhairabi Prasad Sahu and T.K. Venkatasubramanian (ed.) Negotiating the Past – Essays in Memory of Partha Sarathi Gupta. New Delhi: Tulika Books, pp. 3-28.

Nayanjot Lahiri. 2015. Ashoka in Ancient India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Chapter 6.

Nayanjot Lahiri. 2013. ‘Living Antiquarianism in India’ in Alain Schnapp

(ed.) World Antiquarianism – Comparative Perspectives. Los Angeles: The Getty

Research Institute Publications Program, pp. 423-38.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2013. ‘Is “Indian Civilization” a Myth?’ in Sanjay Subrahmanyam Is Indian Civilization a Myth – Fiction and Histories. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, pp. 1-10. 

Sunil Khilnani. 1997 (1998 reprint). The Idea of India. London: Penguin Books, chapter four (‘Who is an Indian?’), pp. 150-95.

Sunil S. Amrith. 2013. Crossing the Bay of Bengal. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 1.

Thapar, Romila. The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities through History. Seagull Books, 2014.