A Rebuttal to “Eminent Historians”: Lies and more lies

Many of you must have read a report in The Hindu from a few weeks ago by unnamed “Eminent Historians” titled, “From ‘India Shining’ to ‘India was Shining’“. The report (dt. 3rd May) appeared to be an amateurish attempt at trashing some of the claims made in the BJP’s manifesto regarding India’s past and heritage.

It had excerpts from the BJP’s manifesto and brief counter-points dismissing the claims and assertions. Curiously – in spite of being authored by “Eminent Historians” – it was surprisingly light on references and historical sources.

Dr. J. K. Bajaj and Dr. M. D. Srinivas of the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai subsequently compiled a detailed rebuttal which was published on several sites on the web.

I am posting some excerpts from the original news-report as well as the rebuttal for the sake of record (and personal reference). If this is the first time you are hearing about this matter, please read on:

First, some excerpts from report in The Hindu. The excerpts from BJP’s manifesto are in italics. The comments by “Eminent Historians” are in blue.

Indian civilisation is perhaps the most ancient and continuing civilisation of the world. India has a long history and has been recognised by others as a land of great wealth and even greater wisdom…Indians, particularly educated under the system of education imposed by the Britishers, have lost sight of not only the cultural and civilisational greatness of India, but also of its technological achievements and abounding natural resources.

India is not the most ancient civilisation. Civilisation is generally defined as having city cultures and that would make Egypt, Mesopotamia and China older. Nor is it the only continuous culture since China has a continuous culture that is older.

According to foreigners visiting this country, Indians were regarded as the best agriculturists in the world. Records of these travels from the 4th Century BC till early-19th Century speak volumes about our agricultural abundance which dazzled the world. The Thanjavur (900-1200 AD) inscriptions and Ramnathapuram (1325 AD) inscriptions record 15 to 20 tonnes per hectare production of paddy.

Agricultural abundance varied over time and space. There was no uniform abundance at all times. Joshi quotes inscriptions from Thanjavur but does not say which one. In AD 1054 (the period he speaks of as producing 20 tons per hectare of paddy) there is also a record that the area of Alangudi in Thanjavur Dt. suffered severe famine, so severe that even the state could not help the people and they finally went to the temple and sold their land to the temple treasury to get money to buy food from elsewhere. [M.E.A.R. 1899-1900, 20]

Famine was common and is mentioned in Indian texts. We do not have to go looking for certificates of merit from foreign visitors. References are made to anavrishti and ativrishti and locusts as the cause. Famine is referred to in the Ramayana [1.8.12 ff] and the Mahabharata [12.139] and in the latter it led to people eating all kinds of unsavoury things. The frequency of references to the 12-year famine is found in many texts. Manu in his Dharma-shastra states that in times of famine social codes can be dispensed with. [102 ff] The Jatakas refer to famines. [1.75, etc;]

It has been established beyond doubt by the several reports on education at the end of the 18th Century and the writings of Indian scholars that not only did India have a functioning indigenous educational system but that it actually compared more than favourably with the system obtaining in England at the time in respect of the number of schools and colleges proportionate to the population, the number of students in schools and colleges, the diligence as well as the intelligence of the students, the quality of the teachers and the financial support provided from private and public sources.

Contrary to the then prevailing opinion, those attending school and college included an impressive percentage of lower caste students, Muslims and girls.

There were no schools or colleges as we know them today in ancient India. Upper caste children were educated in mathas, agraharas and sometimes monasteries. Children following a profession were apprentices in that profession. Lower castes and women were not educated generally. In Sanskrit plays they are the ones who speak the vernacular language Prakrit whilst the upper caste, educated persons speak Sanskrit.

India knew plastic surgery, practised it for centuries and, in fact, it has become the basis of modern plastic surgery. India also practised the system of inoculation against small pox centuries before the vaccination was discovered by Dr. Edward Jenner.

India had no practice of plastic surgery until modern times. Nor did India know about vaccines.

Fa-Hian, writing about Magadha in 400 AD, has mentioned that a well organised health care system existed in India. According to him, the nobles and householders of this country had founded hospitals within the city to which the poor of all countries, the destitute, the crippled and the diseased may repair.

“They receive every kind of requisite help. Physicians inspect their diseases, and according to their cases, order them food and drink, medicines or decoctions, everything in fact that contributes to their ease. When cured they depart at their ease.”

The Chinese pilgrims visiting India — Fa Hien and Hsuan Tsang — make a brief mention of sick persons being treated by having to fast for seven days and being given some medicine. This was probably the treatment given to sick monks in monasteries. There were no hospitals.

*** End of Excerpts from The Hindu article ***

Next, some excerpts from the rebuttal

*Agricultural Productivity of India*

An easily available source on the productivity of Indian agriculture in pre-British south India is the article by L. B. Alaev, The System of Agricultural Production: South India, in the widely available *The Cambridge Economic History of India*, Vol. I, c.1200-c.1750, Cambridge 1982.

On the basis of epigraphic records, Alaev estimates productivity of 6.6 tons per hectare of paddy in the not so fertile region of Ramanad. This is almost certainly an underestimate…

Another fairly well-known source is Dr. Tennant’s, *Indian Recreations*, which mentions productivity of 7.5 tons of wheat per hectare in the region around Allahabad in 1803; …Similarly high productivity in several places in north India was repeatedly mentioned by several British administrators up to the middle of the nineteenth century.

…detailed references are available in Tapan Raychaudhuri’s, “The mid-Eighteenth century Background”, in *The Cambridge Economic History of India*, Vol. II, c.1757-c.1970, Cambridge 1982…Raychaudhuri observes “One striking fact about Indian agriculture in pre-colonial and early colonial days is the very high yield per acre – which cannot be explained away simply as errors of observation…”

*Public Health Care*

The ‘eminent historians’ dismiss the observations of Fa-Hien and Huan Tsang as brief references to the treatment of monks. However, the statements of both observers are far from brief or ambiguous; these are very explicit and detailed. What Fa Hien actually says in this context is:

“The nobles and householders of this country have founded hospitals within the city, to which the poor of all countries, the destitute, cripples and the diseased may repair. They receive every kind of requisite help gratuitously. Physicians inspect their diseases, and according to their cases, order them food and drink, medicine or decoctions, everything in fact that may contribute to their ease. When cured they depart at ease.”

The quote is from Fa Hien: *A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms*, English Translation by J. Legge, Oxford 1886, Delhi Reprint 1971, p.79.

…However, an even more eminent foreign scholar, Dominik Wujastyk, in his *The Roots of Ayurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings *(Penguin
Classics, London 2003), concludes the following on the basis of Fa-Hien’s observations:

“This description by Fa Hsien is one of the earliest accounts of a civic hospital system anywhere in the world and, coupled with Caraka’s description of how a clinic should be equipped… suggests that India may have been the first part of the world to have evolved an organized metropolitan system of institutionally-based medical provision.”

*Plastic Surgery and Inoculation*

The eminent historians dismiss the possibility of plastic surgery being practiced in pre-British India. But the operation is mentioned in great
detail in the Susruta Samhita and the reference is well-known to those interested in the history of plastic surgery. *

Such operations were being performed in India even in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century is widely reported. Below is an account of the operation from J. C. Carpue, *An Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose from the Integuments of the forehead …to which are prefixed Historical and Physiological Remarks on the Nasal Operation including Descriptions of the Indian and Italian Methods* (London, 1816):

“It was in this manner that the nasal operation had become forgotten or despised, in at least the west of Europe; when, at the close of the last century, it was once more heard of in England, from a quarter whence mankind will yet, perhaps, derive many lights, as well in science, as in learning and in arts. A periodical publication, for the year 1794, contains the following communication from a correspondent in India, which is accompanied by a portrait of the person mentioned, explanatory of the operation.
‘Cowasjee, a Mahratta, of the caste of husbandman, was a bullock-driver with the English army, in the war of 1792, and was made a prisoner by Tippoo, who cut off his nose, and one of his hands. In this state, he joined the Bombay army near Seringapatam, and is now a pensioner of the Honourable East India Company. For above twelve months, he was wholly without a nose; when he had a new one put on, by a Mahratta surgeon, a Kumar, near Pune. This operation is not uncommon in India, and has been practised from time immemorial. Two of the medical gentlemen, Mr. Thomas Cruse and Mr. James Findlay, of Bombay, have seen it performed as follows…

The above article has been reprinted in *Classics of Medicine Library*, Bethesda 1981.

Inoculation against small-pox through injection of material derived from the cow – the so-called ‘vaccination’ – was indeed not practised in India; but inoculation with attenuated human small-pox material obtained from previous outbreaks was widespread and is well-documented. One fairly easily available account is that of J. Z. Holwell, FRS, published in 1767.

*Public Education*

The eminent historians are most dismissive of the suggestion that there were public arrangements for school education in India. Instead of giving any data, they merely assert, on the authority of their imputed ‘eminence’, that there were no schools or colleges in India and that education was imited to upper castes. However, there is just too much of evidence available about a widespread system of education in India in the various surveys that the British undertook during the eighteenth century.

The evidence of these surveys cannot be dismissed by merely the shake of an eminent head. The details of the surveys have been painstakingly compiled and analysed in Dharampal: *The Beautiful Tree*, Biblia Impex, Delhi 1983. (also online here).

*** End of Excerpts from the rebuttal ***

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