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BRILLS
INDOLOGICAL
LIBRARY
EDITED BY
JOHANNES BRONKHORST
IN CO-OPERATION WITH
CIRCUMAMBULATIONS
IN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY
Essays in Honour of Dirk H.A. Kolff
EDITED BY
BRILL
LEIDEN BOSTON
2003
ISSN 0925-2916
ISBN 90 04 13155 8
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ......................................................................
vii
ix
Introduction ................................................................................
Jos Gommans and Om Prakash
29
47
69
105
117
133
159
vi
179
217
233
251
283
307
325
353
Index ..........................................................................................
359
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
L R is professor of political science and the social sciences at the University of Chicago. Together with his wife, S
H R, he publishes extensively on a wide range of issues
involving modern South Asian society.
H S is a diplomat in the Dutch foreign service. At
present he is Head of the Security and Defence Policy Division in
The Hague.
G S was associate professor at the Kern Institute of
Leiden University.
INTRODUCTION
Jos Gommans and Om Prakash
Als iemand die de geschiedenis en cultuur van India doceert aan een universiteit in
ons land, schaam ik me eigenlijk het toe te geven, want ik ben medeverantwoordelijk
voor de stagnatie van ons India-beeld. Toch kunnen alle universiteiten van Europa
tezamen hier weinig aan veranderen. Om ten lange leste een idee van India te
verkrijgen dat recht doet aan die samenleving, hebben we kunstenaars nodig. Als
we af willen van de vele clichs, waarvan ik er enkele noemde, zullen we heel wat
lagen van vooroordelen van ons af moeten pellen en India de kans geven ons te
verrassen en zich te laten zien in een nieuwe vorm.1
D.H.A. Kol
On the rst of March 2003, Dirk H.A. Kol became emeritus professor of Leiden University. From the very beginning, Kol s career
has been closely connected to that academic institution. After taking
his MA in History there in 1967, he became lecturer at the Kern
Institute in 1971. In 1983 he nished his PhD thesis and in 1991
became Leiden professor of the Modern History of South Asia.
This volume is a collective tribute to Kol s scholarship by some
of his friends and colleagues. As usual with tributes, everyone brings
valuable oblations from his own exotic homeland, the result being
as rich as it is variegated. Perhaps the latter should be tolerated in
a volume dedicated to a scholar who discards one-dimensional views
and prefers the pluriform conveyed by multiplicity of voices. Reading
all these dierent papers certainly evokes Kol s own metaphor of
the circumambulation which oers no certainty or nality but merely
reections on the ongoing mystery. Om Prakash, himself a monetary historian, will attempt to convert these dierent tributes into
one currency and carefully estimate its overall value. Before that,
however, Jos Gommans will discuss Kol s own scholarly circumambulations at the periphery of history, or to use Kol s own phrase,
at the conuence of anthropology, history and indology. Although
he has not been a particularly prolic writer, it is all the more
remarkable that Kol s work stands at the root of what has become
a most ourishing South Asian branch of ethnohistory, including that
most uncanny of oshoots: the new military history of South Asia. And
there is denitively more to come, as his most recent work anticipates his explorations into yet another fringe of the historical discipline: South Asian psychohistory.
By highlighting his published scholarly work in this volume, it is
not intended to underplay his considerable contributions as a teacher.
Many who have attended his classes have been inspired by the way
he leads his students from one surprise to the other, slowly but surely
breaking down preconceived notions about a static and backward
Indian civilisation.2 Besides, it should not be ignored that Kol was
an enthusiastic university manager; this being a somewhat rare phenomenon among his Leiden colleagues.3 Moreover, beyond the purely
academic, were his repeated attempts to stimulate the social and
spiritual cohesion of the university community. Although his idea of
a university meditation centre failed to materialise, thanks to his concerted eorts, the Leiden Faculty Club was realised in 1999.4 All in
all, though, we feel Kol was most successful as a writing scholar.
Hence, the following will turn to his internationally recognised contributions to various elds of South Asian studies.
2
Kol s fondness for teaching, particularly to the general public, is most clearly
demonstrated in his involvement in the development of a very successful course
in world history at the Dutch Open University of Heerlen. See the report by
M. Broesterhuizen in Katern Hoger Onderwijs ( Juni 1985), pp. 58.
3
From 1992 until 1997, he served as the director of the Centre for Asian, African
and Amerindian Studies (CNWS) (see D.H.A. Kol, Aziatische, Afrikaanse
en Amerindische talen en culturen (het niet-westen), in H.J. de Jonge and
W. Otterspeer (eds), Altijd een vonk of twee. De universiteit Leiden van 1975 tot 2000
(Leiden, 2000), pp. 5965. Kol himself said about this period: . . . a large part
of it was a waste of time. Nothing remains [er ligt niks], it vaporizes (Dirk van
Delft, De vrijgestelde onderzoeker, Hypothese, July 2000, p. 11).
4
The plan for the meditation centre reminds one of one of the ancestors of the
Kol family, Ds Gualtherus Kol (16441705), who was a Protestant minister in
Vuren en Dalem, Noordeloos and Maassluis (N. Manneke, Kol in zeven eeuwen
(Rotterdam, 2001, pp. 189). But as Kol observed himself, more than this religious background, the familys common riverine connections are striking (D.H.A.
Kol, De familie en onze rivieren, De Colve, 7 (2002).
5
For Kol s writings on Huizinga, see Huizingas proefschrift en de stemmingen van Tachtig, in: Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden
104 (1989), pp. 38092; Huizingas Dissertation and the Stemmingen of the
Literary Movement of the Eighties, in W. Otterspeer (ed.), Leiden Oriental Connections 18501940 (Leiden, 1989), pp. 141152; Huizinga en de Vedisch-Brahmaanse
Religie: Zijn college als privaat-docent te Amsterdam in 190304, in Hanneke van
den Muyzenberg en Thomas de Bruijn (eds), Waarom Sanskrit? Honderdvijfentwintig jaar
Sanskrit in Nederland (Kern Institute Miscellanea, 4) (Leiden, 1991), pp. 6473;
Huizinga and the Vedic-Brahmanic Religion. His rst series of lectures at the
University of Amsterdam in 190304, in A.W. van der Hoek, D.H.A. Kol and
M.S. Oort (eds.), Ritual, State and History in South Asia: Essays in Honour of J.C. Heesterman
(Leiden, 1992), pp. 578586.
6
D.H.A. Kol, Indische geschiedenis een overwonnen contradictie?, in Groniek,
92 (1985), pp. 289.
7
Taken from Kol s introduction to J.C. Heestermans Festschrift (Kol et al.,
Ritual, State and History in South Asia, p. ix).
8
This view derives from Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of
Modernity (New York, 1990). He once mentioned in one of his classes that the book
had had a great deal of inuence on his thinking.
9
D.H.A. Kol, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The Ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 14501850 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 193.
10
See J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship,
and Society (Chicago, 1985); The Broken World of Sacrice. An Essay in Ancient Indian
Ritual (Chicago, 1993).
elaborates on this idea in his dissertation, albeit in the specic historical context of the early Mughal period. In a very enlightening
venture into the eld of Indian law, one nds Kol struggling with
yet another, but closely related Indian incompatibility: that of universal dharma against the practical reality of customary local lawways. Although there is a mediating middle ground consisting of
positive royal (and colonial) decrees, the British sadly fail to recognise this organic whole of the Indian law system.11
Apart from being faced with dualities that are more or less part
of Indian civilisation, Kol experienced another dual conict in his
brief but ongoing involvement with Indo-British colonial history. Now
it was the Battle of the Two Philosophies, that between Romantic
paternalism on the one hand and Benthamite utilitarianism on the
other.12 This dualism was suggested by Erik Stokes to divide the two
main strands in nineteenth-century colonial thinking. Although very
much inspired by Stokes work, Kol again insists in providing a
more complicated picture that brings together or goes beyond this
beautifully printed menu. Again it shows that Kol feels rather
unhappy with too easy models and dichotomies that caricaturise
instead of clarify the complexities of the human experience. In this
context, as well as on many other occasions, Kol is not seeking the
comfort of the comradely consensus but prefers to be a dissenting
voice; its echoes resound in the elds of ethnohistory, colonial history and psychohistory.
From history and anthropology to ethnohistory
Let me start with Kol s dissertation, nished in 1983 and, in a
slightly revised form, published by Cambridge University Press in
1990.13 It grew out of his earlier work on two themes: the history
11
D.H.A. Kol, The Indian and the British Law Machines: Some Remarks on
Law and Society in British India, in W.J. Mommsen and J.A. de Moor (eds.),
European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th- and
20th-Century Africa and Asia (Oxford and New York, 1992), pp. 20135 (in particular pp. 2067).
12
Most explicitly in Kol, The Indian and British Law Machines, p. 221, and
again in his inaugural lecture (A British Indian Circumambulation, Itinerario, 16,2
(1992), p. 89. This refers to E.T Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford,
1959).
13
Respectively An Armed Peasantry and its Allies: Rajput Tradition and State
Formation in Hindustan, 14501850; and Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. In 2002 the
Delhi branch of Oxford University Press issued a paperback.
14
This already appears in his rst two publications on the early history of the
Dutch Revolt in Leiden when he studies the socio-economic background of religious strife in the city (D.H.A. Kol, Libertatis Ergo: De beroerten binnen Leiden
in de jaren 1566 en 1567, Leids Jaarboekje (1966), pp. 11848; with A.C. Duke,
The Time of Troubles in the County of Holland, 15661567, Tijdschrift voor
Geschiedenis, 82 (1969), pp. 31637. Cf. J. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness
and Fall 14771806 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 13754.
15
D.H.A. Kol, A Study of Land Transfers in the Mau Tahsil, District Jhansi,
in K.N. Chaudhuri and C.J. Dewey (eds.), Economy and Society. Essays in Indian Economic
and Social History (Delhi, 1979), pp. 5385. See also his Economische ontwikkeling
zonder sociale verandering; de katoen van Hindoestan, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis,
87 (1974), pp. 54553.
16
This extensiveness of Indian commercial and military networks was already
stressed by Kollf in his rst published note on an Indian subject: his Sanyasi
Trader-Soldiers in Indian Economic and Social History Review, 8,2 (1971), pp. 2138.
17
For a more detailed discussion on this, see the introduction to Jos J.L. Gommans
and D.H.A. Kol (eds.), Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 10001800 (Themes in
Indian History) (Oxford, 2001), pp. 142. In the eld of South Asias new military
history Kol s contribution to J.A. de Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds.), Imperialism
and War. Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa (Leiden, 1989) was also important
(The End of an Ancien Rgime Colonial War in India, 17981818, pp. 2249).
Kol elaborated on the theme of Indian violence in his Geweld en geweldloosheid:
de twee gezichten van India, Reector (February 1987), pp. 22631. For his strong
dismissal of the idea that rational terror in South Asia is an imported, western
phenomenon, see his Terreurfantasie op het ISIM, Mare, 8 (18 October 2001)
and 9 (1 November 2001).
18
D.H.A. Kol and H.W. van Santen (eds), De geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over
Mughal Indi, 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie (Werken uitgegeven door de Linschoten-Vereeniging,
LXXXI) (The Hague, 1979).
19
It also gives us a most lively insight into the Christian community or nation
in seventeenth-century Surat. For this, see D.H.A. Kol, La Nation Chrtienne
Surate au dbut du XVIIme Sicle, in J.L. Mige (ed.), La femme dans les socits
coloniales (Aix-en-Provence, 1984), pp. 716.
20
Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 19.
10
reality of Mughal India in its entirety, obscured rather than illuminated political and social dynamics.21 In fact, Kol found that caste
and other social identities were not yet those rigid and ascriptive
social phenomena as analysed for the late-nineteenth and twentieth
centuries but they were still open, conscriptive categories and, as
such, most tting corollaries of the extensive and ever-shifting alliances
that dominated the military labour market.
But Kol would not be Kol if he had not attempted to combine the universal concept of a labour market into something specically
Indian. Hence, in stead of caste, tribe or nation, Kol turned to the
idea of naukar, a term that originated from a Central Asian context
but was widely current in medieval Hindustan to describe the negotiable service of a free retainer to his master-cum-employer.22 According
to Kol, naukar was the driving force of groups and networks of
groups participating in the military labour market. Apart from studying the usual Persian chronicles and European travelogues, Kol
turned towards the colonial material he knew so well from his earlier enquiries: the enormous amount of information gathered in district gazetteers and numerous volumes on tribes and castes. Moreover,
in his eagerness to nd proper Indian notions and to come as close
as possible to the village level, he enthusiastically looked at the Indian
folk traditions collected and studied by indologists like Grierson and
Vaudeville. Without too much hyperbole, one may say that for
medieval North-Indian history, this combination of sources was not
only unprecedented but also proved extremely fruitful. As a result,
we rediscover concepts like the military labour market and naukar
in the guise of the viraha, i.e. the separation of a woman and her
husband, a theme so evocatively expressed in Indias numerous folk
songs, ballads and legends.23 In this fascinating exercise, soon to be
coined ethnohistory, Kol not only managed to connect the universal (military labour market) with the specically Indian (naukar)
but also to bring real village life into these concepts. Perhaps, one
may even say that, with the introduction of ethnohistory, Kol succeeds where Huizinga had failed.24
21
Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 30. Probably, the use of a German concept derives
from Kol s classes with the Leiden Germanist Bas Schot.
22
Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, pp. x, 20, 25, 76, 7982, 1813, 193.
23
Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, pp. 7485.
24
At about the same time, Nicholas Dirks opened up southern India for ethno-
11
history (N.B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown. Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge,
1987). Perhaps one can say that it was the anthropologist among the historians
Bernard Cohn who paved the way for both Kol and Dirks.
25
Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 193.
26
For Wink, see his Land and Sovereignty in India. Agrarian Society and Politics under
the Eighteenth-century Maratha Svarjya (Cambridge, 1986).
27
Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, p. 199.
28
R.S. Cooper in Modern Asian Studies, 26,1 (1992), p. 208.
12
13
Among Mughal historians, especially Douglas Streusands work extensively draws on Kol s conclusions about the important role of the
armed peasantry in the North-Indian military labour market.35 Somewhat remarkably, considering the fact that it undermines the idea
of a highly-centralised Mughal state, the book has also been positively reviewed by the doyen of Mughal studies, Irfan Habib. Although
he criticises Kol for using only printed sourcesamong these he
forages widely and insightfullythe material from other, documentary evidence is likely to support, rather than throw doubt on
Kol s main thesis. Rather less surprisingly, the Aligarh historian,
and thus very much against current revisionist opinion, is particularly happy with the discontinuity that, according to Kol, followed
on the rural demilitarisation under British rule and turned zamndrs
from armed magnates into landlords.36 Considering the turbulence
of the historical debate in the 1980s, the books acclaim on the part
of both Aligarh and revisionist scholars is indeed a most remarkable
feat of scholarship.
Comparative colonial studies
During the rst decade after his research trip to Jhansi (196870)
and his appointment as a lecturer at the Kern Institute of Leiden
University (1971), Kol was working on his dissertation which he
defended in 1983. Meanwhile, in 1979, he published his article on
Bundelkhand land transfers and edited, with one of his students Hans
van Santen, Pelsaerts writings for the Linschoten Vereniging. In that
same year, he wrote an article in which, for the rst time, he made
a few preliminary comments comparing the colonial administration
of British India with that of the Dutch East Indies. This he did
mainly through the eyes of the Dutch colonial administrator Van
Hogendorp who on his 1875 mission to India was to report on
British methods to calculate, register and collect the land revenue.
35
Douglas E. Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Delhi, 1989), pp.
413; 456; 73, 81, 144. My own recent survey Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and
High Roads to Empire 15001700 (London, 2002) extensively builds on Kol s concept of the military labour market.
36
In Irfan Habib (ed.), Medieval India 1: Researches in the History of India 12001750
(Delhi, 1992), pp. 21011. Remarkably, in the same volume M. Athar Ali, another
Aligarh scholar, ercely reviews Streusands work (pp. 2167).
14
In this article, Kol, while working with the equally dry facts and
gures of the Bundelkhand district archives, must have sympathised
with Van Hogendorps aim to use endless and complicated statistics
to come as close as possible to the social and economic reality on
the ground. In his conclusion Kol anticipates his later theme, published in several comparative articles, that European categories like
conservative and liberal did not count as much in the East as at
home. On the contrary, both in India and Indonesia, the character
of the colonial administration was strongly determined by the local,
social-economic circumstances.37
Kol s rst strides into comparative colonial history were soon to
be further stimulated by the so-called Cambridge-Delhi-LeidenYogyakarta conferences, taking place during the mid-1980s, which
specically aimed at a comparison between the Indian and Indonesian
experience with colonialism.38 In this stimulating academic context,
Kol, at one of these instances together with the Indonesianists Cees
Fasseur, threw doubt over the widely held opinion, informed by
Furnivall and Emerson, that the British colonial ocials were rst
of all magistrates and relatively distant referees in a boxing match
while the Dutch civil servants were welfare ocers, planners and
social engineers. According to Kol, this picture of British indirect
rule versus Dutch direct rule was far too simplistic. He stressed that
similarities and dierences between the British and the Dutch were
rooted in the Asian societies they ruled. For him dwelling on the
dierent national characteristics of the two soon comes down to sentimental twaddle.
For Kol there are at least two important structural dierences
between Indian and Indonesian societies that have caused the two
37
D.H.A. Kol, De kontroleur G.K. van Hogendorp (18441879): Een enthousiast statisticus, in F. van Anrooij, D.H.A. Kol, J.T.M. van Laanen, and G.J.
Telkamp (eds.), Between People and Statistics. Essays on Modern Indonesian History presented
to P. Creutzberg (The Hague, 1979), pp. 175206.
38
D.H.A. Kol, Administrative Tradition and the Dilemma of Colonial Rule:
an Example of the Early 1830s, in C.A. Bayly and D.H.A. Kol (eds.), Two Colonial
Empires: Comparative Essays on the History of India and Indonesia in the Nineteenth Century
(Dordrecht, 1986), pp. 95109; C. Fasseur and D.H.A. Kol, Some Remarks on
the Development of Colonial Bureaucracies in India and Indonesia, in Itinerario,
10,1 (1986), pp. 3155. Two years later he wrote with V.J.H. Houben a similarly
comparative essay, about the pre-colonial period: Between Empire Building and
State Formation. Ocial Elites in Java and Mughal India, Itinerario, 12,1 (1988),
pp. 165194.
15
39
Fasseur and Kol, Some Remarks, pp. 323. This dierence props up again
in Kol s recent survey De Engelse Oostindische Compagnie, in Tijdschrift voor
Geschiedenis, 115,4 (2002), pp. 54465.
40
Fasseur and Kol, Some Remarks, pp. 334.
41
Kol, Administrative Tradition, p. 96. Here, with Van Hogendorp, Kol
appears to contradict himself as he rst praises Java for its smaller distance between
Europeans and natives (see Kol, De kontroleur, p. 200).
16
42
17
47
For this he took up a sabbatical leave of 6 months that was spent at the
Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) at Wassenaar. For a brief, personal report of this period, see Van Delft, De vrijgestelde onderzoeker, p. 11.
48
D.H.A. Kol, Een Brits-Indische omwandeling (Oratie Rijksuniversiteit Leiden,
1991), subsequently published in De Gids, 156 (1993), pp. 63545. My references
are to the English translation published as A British Indian Circumambulation
in Itinerario, 16,2 (1992), pp. 85100.
18
49
Kol mentions the French work of Mannoni, Fanon and Memmi and the
Indian work of Sudhir Kakar and Ashis Nandi. In this context he also speaks favorably of Jan Bremans work on Dutch colonial excesses (British Indian Circumambulation, p. 92).
50
Kol, British Indian Circumambulation, p. 97. In another context, Shores
problematic involvement with pre-colonial Indian society seems to reappear in Kol s
recent comments on the Dutch novelist Jacob Haafner (Jacob Haafners Journey in
a Palanquin: A Passionate Farewell from a Colonial Ancien Rgime, in D.W. Loenne
(hrsg), Tohfa-e-Dil. Festschrift Helmut Nespital, Bd 2: Kulturwissenschaften (Reinbek, 2001),
pp. 72747, more in particular p. 746.
51
Kol himself mentions Lacan and Levinas in this context (British Indian
Circumambulation, p. 92).
19
20
21
Agra through a daughter of Shah Jahan who had her jgr in Awadh.
There were also cases of the Company borrowing directly from the
imperial treasury. However, for fear that such interaction might eventually have undesirable consequences, the scale of such contacts was
deliberately kept limited. Finally, in an important case study of a
major Surat magnate, Virji Vohra, Van Santen demonstrates in some
detail the nature of the complex relationship between Indian merchants,
the Mughal state ocials and the European trading companies.
The essay by Ren Barendse is concerned mainly with the role
of the indigenous soldiers in maintaining order in eighteenth-century
Portuguese Goa and adjoining territories. He begins by using the
notion of the military scal state and argues that it applied to
the Portuguese state in India as much as it did to the English and
the Dutch in India and elsewhere in Asia. The 1762 annexation of
provinces adjacent to Goa which had eectively tripled the size of
the Estado da ndia territories necessitated a substantial accretion
to the military forces available to it. Barendse discusses in some detail
the distinguishing characteristic features such as amenability to discipline etc. of the dierent companies of the Estado forces. He argues
that the new sepoy force in Portuguese service from the 1770s onwards
represented a transition from the ancien rgime to the military scal
state in Portuguese India. He thus disagrees with the hypothesis of
continuity in this respect between the pre-colonial and the colonial
periods. There are according to him two basic dierences between
the situation in the seventeenth century and that in the eighteenth.
One new feature was that the frontier raids were now nanced
through permanently assigning the incomes of villages in Bicholim
to the invading army, a practice that did not exist in the seventeenth century. The second dierence was the taking of hostages
which was also a new phenomenon.
The contribution of Mark de Lannoy is also concerned with military history in the eighteenth century though the corporate enterprise discussed this time is the Dutch East India Company on the
Malabar Coast, the only region of the subcontinent in which the
Company enjoyed territorial rights. Following the loss of the fortress
at Colachel to the Travancore forces in 1740, a trial of the President
of the Dutch Council of War in Malabar, Captain Johannes Hackert
and of Andries Leslorant, the engineer who had been responsible
for the fortications at the Colachel fort was conducted between
1740 and 1742 by a Council of War established by Stein van
22
23
turer Khoja Gregory alias Gurgin Khan who had started his career
as a merchant but who eventually ended up as the principal military condant of Mir Qasim and the commander-in-chief of his
army. This man has almost found a place in the folklore of Bengal
guring prominently in one of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyays novels Chandrasekhar. The novelist portrays the man essentially as an
opportunist with an eye on the throne of Bengal. Be as it may,
Gurgin Khan at any rate played an important role in modernizing
Mir Qasims army in the latters quest to get rid of the English yoke.
In August 1763, however, Gurgin Khan was murdered while in the
entourage of Mir Qasim between Monghyr and Patna. Was Mir
Qasim himself behind the murder? Bhattacharya speculates in detail
on this point.
The next block of three papersby Digby, Gommans and Schokkerbelong to a very dierent genre. They deal basically with issues
of kingship, legitimacy, rebellion, slavery, military recruitment and
so forth in parts of northern India, now broadly in the state of Uttar
Pradesh and which Kol in his work on the ethnohistory of the military labour market had termed Hindustan. Simon Digbys essay
deals with the revolt against the Indo-Afghans which temporarily dispossessed the Lodis of their capital of Jawnpur shortly after the accession of Sultan Sikandar (1489 AD). In reconstructing the event, Digby
uses, among other sources, a Su biographical work and a collection of orally-derived anecdotes regarding the Indo-Afghans and their
campaigns. Digbys argument is that eective military manpower
could be raised from the armed peasantry of Awadh at the time of
the rebellion to establish an eective administration over the heartland of the Jawnpur Sultanate north of the Ganga and that this military force could be deployed only by a leader who had also established
a defensive military base south of the Ganga.
The piece by Jos Gommans on the Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad
ties in rather neatly with Dirk Kol s work on the military labour
market. Indeed, the history of the Bangash Nawabs is an interesting case study of Indian military slavery. Being introduced from a
Turko-Persian context, military slaves were instrumental in conquering
and establishing a new homeland for their Afghan masters. The rst
Muslim raids into India in the twelfth century and the eventual conquest of parts of northern India at the end of the thirteenth century was achieved by Turkish mamlks or bandagn in the service of
the Ghaznavid and Ghurid dynasties in Afghanistan and Khorasan.
24
Under the Mughals, slaves played only a minor part both in the
administration as well as in the army. According to Abul Fazl, Akbar
believed that mastership belonged to no one but God. He, therefore, borrowed the term chela from the Hindu bhakti and the Indianized
Su tradition, signifying the complete attachment of a faithful disciple or pupil (chela or murd) to a venerable, holy leader ( guru or
pr). Here the relationship is not one of ownership but one of
unqualied and unconditional love. In due course, though, chela
became the current Indian name for a mamlk-like or ulm-like
slave. This departure from a Turko-Persian Islamic expression reected
not only the reduced importance of slaves under the Mughals but
also Akbars reorientation to an Indianized Indo-Islamic culture.
Gommans argues that Indias short-lived experience of the mamlk
system owed a great deal to the vibrancy of the extensive free labour
market in the subcontinent. The large availability of cheap military
labour and of ready cash to pay for it in a relationship of naukar
made slavery increasingly redundant. The opportunities oered by
the naukar relationship brought to the Bangash Nawabs enormous
riches and honours which further strengthened their position both
in Farrukhabad and among the Mughal nobility.
The essay by G.H. Schokker is concerned with the legitimation
of kingship in Bundelkhand. Schokker provides a detailed analysis
of two genealogies written in Braj, a variant of Hindi, as source
material on the legitimacy of the Bundela kingship. Both the genealogies claim the descent of the Bundelas from the Gaharavaras whose
last king Jayachandra was defeated and killed by Muhammad Ghuri
at Candravara in the Etawah district. Schokker questions the validity of this claim. He also suggests that the manner in which the
Bundela genealogies seek to legitimise kingship has a close parallel
in the tradition of the Rathor Rajputs at Jodhpur similarly claiming
descent from the Gaharavara king Jayachandra.
The following two contributionsthe ones by Kooiman and the
Rudolphstake one well into the heart of British India. The paper
of Dick Kooiman deals with the short military career of Walter
Dickens, one of the sons of the author Charles Dickens, in the subcontinent in the immediate post-Mutiny years. The paper contributes
signicantly to an analysis of the process of patronage in inuential
quarters that was a necessary precondition to nding a position in
the service of the East India Company. Dickens arrived in Calcutta
on 30 August 1857 just as the Mutiny had gotten underway and
25
was assigned to Her Majestys 42nd Highlanders. His regiment participated in the battle of Kanpur (December 1857) and took part in
the relief of Lucknow (March 1858). Young Walter gained rapid
promotion as well as a medal for his part in the Lucknow operations. But both his career and life were rather short. He rapidly contracted large debts, fell ill and died in India in February 1864.
Kooimans account also uses Charles Dickens fairly close personal
connection with India in the form mainly of several of his sons
including Walter trying their luck out there to delineate his projection of the country in his writings. The fact that Walter was in the
thick of the Mutiny made Dickens take an unusual amount of interest in the reports regarding the uprising. News regarding English
women and children being massacred was evidently behind Dickens
outburst of October 1857 in which he declared that in case he had
held the oce of the Commander-in-Chief in India, he would have
done his utmost to exterminate the Race upon which the Stain of
the late cruelties rested. Exaggerated notions of loyalty often evoke
strange reactions from otherwise sensible individuals!
The contribution by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph on Colonel
James Tods classic Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan brings out in
sharp relief Tods seminal contribution in facilitating the understanding of aspects of Indian society in the great tradition of British
administrators-cum-scholars such as William Moreland, Malcolm
Darling and many others. Tod arrived in Calcutta in 1799 at the
age of seventeen to begin service in the East India Companys Bengal
army. For a long period of twenty four years, he served the Company
in central and western India in military, surveying, intelligence and
political capacities. In 1818 he became the Companys rst political
agent at Mewar. It was during the following four years that he collected the enormous amount of material for his Annals. In the process
he mastered Mewars language, culture and history. Most of the writing of the Annals was done in London between 1823 and 1831 when
he held the position of the rst Librarian of the recently founded
Royal Asiatic Society. The rst volume of the Annals was published
in 1829 while the second appeared in 1832. This is not only a work
of considerable scholarship about history and ethnography and legend and myth but also as a text which can be explicated as intellectual history. In the course of his Indian career, Tod was also
instrumental in having geographical material relating chiey to the
region between the Indus (in the northwest) and Bundelkhand, the
26
Jamuna and the Narbada (in the east and south) collected and preserved. The Rudolphs also credit him with creating the rst British
intelligence service in India, a service that proved decisive in making the Company and via the Company Britain the victors in the
contest with the Marathas to succeed the Mughals as the hegemonic
power on the Indian subcontinent.
The following two papersby Victor van Bijlert and Jan Brouwer
respectivelyare essentially theoretical pieces. Van Bijlerts essay on
the Idea of Modernity is an exhaustive review of the literature on
this theme. Van Bijlert also discusses in some detail specic issues
such as the eurocentricity of the notion of modernity as opposed to
the more reasonable view of modernity as the multicultural mixture that one can experience in large cities such as Rio, Calcutta or
Mombasa. Some other issues considered are modernity and ethics
and modernity and cultural studies. Another area considered at some
length is the relationship between modernity, colonialism and nationalism with special reference to the case of India. Jan Brouwer provides an interesting anthropological perspective on the relationship
between modern media and indigenous knowledge in India and
Europe. He argues that the advent of television and internet make
for a new cognitive revolution: television being eective in the eld
of life style but not in that of world view while internet technology
is to be seen as a means of reinforcing indigenous knowledge.
The last contribution in the volume is an excellent survey by
Dietmar Rothermund of military organization in South Asian history over a very long period of time starting in the pre-Christian
era and going on to the present day. The instruments of warfare
that Rothermund discusses include weapons as well as animals such
as elephants and horses used extensively in warfare. He also considers the social consequences of warfare as well as its impact on
the composition and the functions of warrior elites. The rst professional warrior elite of South Asia was that of the people who
called themselves rya (noble). Their main instrument of warfare was
the chariot and Rothermund goes into a fair amount of detail on
chariot warfare including its impact on the stratication of early
Aryan society. The nobility consisted of a hereditary segment from
which the kings were drawn and an inferior one appointed in consideration of its military skills. The nature of this type of early kingship is reected in the rituals preceding the avamedha used as the
mechanism for establishing the kings sovereignty. Later when the
27
war-elephant replaced the chariot, say under the Mauryas, the nature
of social stratication also changed. Imperial ocers rather than
noble warriors were the new ruling elite. With the establishment
of the Delhi Sultanate at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
the war elephant was replaced by the cavalry as the principal instrument of warfare. The system of military feudalism based on the
assignment of revenue grants (iq' ) which were given to ocers for
supporting cavalry troops did have a certain amount of centralizing
eect. This became the precursor of the Mughal manabdr system.
In the domain of weaponry, eld-artillery remained the mainstay of
Mughal power throughout. The principal distinguishing feature of
warfare under the East India Company was the rise of a modern
infantry. It was only much later that a new type of armamentthe
tankwas introduced in the British Indian army. The ocer corps
in this army continued to be exclusively British until World War II.
Rothermund also covers the post-Independence era and goes into
the imperatives of the social structure of the Indian and the Pakistan
armies in the second half of the twentieth century. The last section
of the paper deals with the nuclear tests carried out by the two
countries in 1998 and the implications of this development for the
security of the region.
1
We have come to seek Christians and spices. This proud declaration by the Portuguese emissario sent ashore by Vasco da Gama
on reaching Calicut has entered the standard lore of the Age of
Discoveries. The striking point, however, is that the Portuguese on
arrival promptly found interlocutors with whom they could communicate in a Mediterranean lingua franca. That is, they met and
conversed as Mediterraneans among each other. In contrast to
Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama never left the old and familiar worlda world that had its centre in the Middle East, which in
various ways linked the Mediterranean to that other, far larger,
mediterranean of the Indian Ocean. The rst entry of the Portuguese
into the Indian Ocean was no more than adding an alternative channel of communication to the already existing overland route. Along
this channel they introduced the violent competition and enmities of
the Mediterranean.
It is not that the Indian Ocean was an area of peaceful proceedings, cruelly disturbed by ruthless Portuguese violence, not to
speak of the later coming Dutch and English. The Indian waters
had their well-established erce competition, conict and piracy.
However, there is a striking dierence. While the Mediterranean
since the fall of the Roman Empireactually already beforeshows
a pattern of progressively splitting up, the Indian Ocean oers a picture of increasing integration. The Mediterraneans evermore complicated pattern of shifting and criss-crossing dividing lines was not
primarily a matter of the clash of the Christian and Islamic worlds.
1
This essay is the revised and annotated text of a lecture delivered at a conference on Eurasia and Africa during the last Thousand Years, convened by F.M.
Clover, University of Wisconsin, 1112 October 1999.
30
2
Speaking of waves and tides here, is no mere, conveniently vague
metaphor. The channel of communication was indeed the Indian
Ocean with its currents, its trade winds and its coasts. And it was
along this channel that Islam expanded. The expansion of Islam,
then, can give us interesting insights in the integration process of the
Indian Ocean.
It is well-known that Islam was in the rst place carried all over
the Indian Ocean by maritime trac, stimulated by the economic
preponderance of the Middle East and the steadily increasing activity along the sea-lanes, which in turn were linked via the Mediterranean
with the growth of the European economy. From the other end of
the Indian Ocean economic activity was further intensied since the
late tenth century by Chinese involvement leading to Chinese commercial settlements in Southeast Asia and culminating in the great
maritime expeditions under the Ming dynasty in the rst half of the
31
fteenth century (14051431), after which ocial Chinese involvement came to an end. Chinese merchants remained active, though
especially in Southeast Asia.
It was in this context of increasing maritime activity that Islam
primarily could expand along the coasts.2 And for a long time Islam
remained very much a coastal phenomenon. Armed conquest of the
South Asian mainland had to wait till the break-through of Central
Asian mounted archers at the beginning of the thirteenth century.3
But their lightning actions had nothing to do with the strong presence of Islam on the coasts, nor did they bring aboutforcibly or
otherwisesomething even distantly approaching mass conversion.
3
Now, it lies near at hand to suppose that once having a foothold
on the coast Islam easily expanded into the interior. However, on
further consideration it may be doubted, whether the coastal areas
oered the conditions for Islam rmly to take root. And in as far
as this may have been the case, can we safely assume that Islam
automatically penetrated into the interior?
In order to become rmly established and expand, Islam, like
other scriptural religions, needs durable centres for maintaining, developing, transmitting and propagating its scriptural tenets; that is, it
needs stable patronage and generous endowments. Islam, after its
rise in the Arabian peninsula, found the resources for such support
in the Hellenised cities of the Middle East. It was there that it
received its typically urban imprint. But exactly there is the rub.
We tend to think of seaports as permanent towns with a stable
population and properly looked after harbour facilities and defences.
However, in general towns and cities were institutionally of a dierent
naturea point to which we shall have to come back. Seaports,
2
On the historical role of the coasts cf. J.C. Heesterman, Littoral et intrieur de
lInde, in: L. Bluss, H.L. Wesseling and G. Winius (eds.), History and Underdevelopment:
Essays on Underdevelopment and European Expansion in Asia and Africa (Leiden, 1980), pp.
8792; J.C. Heesterman, The Hindu Frontier, Itinerario 13 (1989), pp. 116.
3
On the Opening of the Gates of Hind by Turkish mounted archers, see
A. Wink, Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. II: The Slave Kings and the
Islamic Conquest, 11th13th Centuries (Leiden, 1997), Chs. 3 and 4.
32
4
A typical example is provided by the great port of Melaka, dominating the straits between the Malaccan peninsula and the island of
Sumatra. It was the exchange point between the Indonesian Archi-
4
For a brief survey of Asian ships and shipbuilding, see K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade
and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750
(Cambridge, 1985), pp. 138159. On the great variety of types according to diverging local and regional needs, see p. 141. For Javanese shipbuilding, see D. Lombard,
Le carrefour javanais: Essai dhistoire globale, Vol. II: Les rseaux asiatiques (Paris, 1990),
p. 85f.
5
Cf. K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East Asia Company,
1660 1760 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 51. When Niels Steensgaard speaks of Goa or
Batavia (meaning generally the European creation of port-cities in the Indian Ocean
area) as false centres, dislocating the Indian Ocean network, we should keep in
mind the fundamental instability of the traditional harbour towns and the ease of
their replacement. Actually, the multicentred Indian Ocean network had a long history of dislocations, cutting same lines of communication and redirecting same
activities before the European entry into the area. The dierence was not that
these dislocations were caused by interests external to the Indian Oceanthe
Indian Ocean never was a closed worldbut, so to say, the stabilitas loci of newly
created or refurbished port-cities (see N. Steensgaard, The Indian Ocean Network
and the Emerging World-Economy, in Satish Chandra (ed.), The Indian Ocean (New
Delhi, 1987), p. 149). Below we shall nd occasion to come back to this point with
regard to towns or cities in general.
33
pelago and the South China coast on the one hand and South and
West Asia on the other. So, when the Portuguese attacked Melaka
one would expect that they would have been confronted with a determined resistance. But there was no sign of it. Instead, the sultan
simply withdrew to the hinterland at a distance of a days journey.
The attack was seen as a raid after which the assailants would retire
with the loot or the agreed ransoma not unusual event. The
Portuguese, however, did something very unusual. They did not retire
but, on the contrary, stayed and built a fortress. A legendary version of the conquest of Melakawritten down 200 years later, around
the end of the seventeenth centurysingles out the building of the
fortress for a fulsome treatment in a curious mixture of half-way
realistic and half-mythic-cosmogonic detail, thus stressing the unusual
importance of the event. The sultan on the other hand, resignedly
goes elsewhere to found new seaports, Bintang and Johore, equally
on the straits.6 This well illustrates the relative ease of founding new
seaports as well as their disposability. More generally we see here that
the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese instead of concentrating maritime and commercial power gave rise to the growth of other seaports (including Aceh and Jambi). This in turn also signals the rising
tide of intensication of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean, bringing further integration, as well as sharper competition, to which the
Portuguese contributed a tinge of often berserker-like warriordom.
Now, for all its fame and importance as a seaport and entrept
Melaka had no hinterland of its own. But even Surat on the Indian
west coast, the main maritime outlet of northern India and as such
favoured by the imperial Mughal government, was far from a portcity, even from the contemporary European point of view. Thus
Hendrik Zwaardecroon, director of the Dutch East India Company
at Surat from 1699 to 1701, noted with dismay that even raging
res did not move the Mughal authorities to any action. Nor did
the silting up of the harbour; on top of that ballast was freely dropped
there. Such neglect was not just incidental.7 Some seventy years
6
The chronicles story is quoted by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Portuguese Empire in
Asia, 1500 1700 (London and New York, 1993), pp. 36 (for the building of the
fort see p. 4f.; next comes the Dutch conquest of Melaka). Cf. also A. Reid, Southeast
Asia in the Age of Commerce, 14501680, Vol. I: The Lands below the Winds (New Haven
and London, 1988), p. 123f.
7
See A. Dasgupta De VOC en Suratte in de 17e en 18e eeuw in M.A.P.
Meilink Roelofsz (ed.), De V.O.C. in Azi (Bussum, 1976), p. 77f.
34
8
See Pelsaerts Remonstrantie in D.H.A. Kol and H.W. van Santen (eds.),
De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal India, 1627 (The Hague, 1979), pp.
287, 289, 308.
9
On the Making of the Modern Indian Ocean Forts, see the contribution of
F.J.A. Broeze, K.E. McPherson and P.D. Reeves in Satish Chandra, The Indian
Ocean, pp. 254316.
35
isation. And it was exactly this that was lacking on the coasts. Typically
an eighteenth-century Arab chronicle remarked on the Muslim
Mappilas of the Malabar coast that they were people of great
courage and zeal for Islam but added that they had few scholars
among them and no more of Islam than the mere name of it.10
Notwithstanding its wealth, the maritime world was not known for
its centres of learning. Moreover, given the contrast between the libertarian coastal milieu and the restrictive regimes of the interior,
penetration of Islam into the inland areas was far from self-evident.
5
But how then could Islam gain a rm foothold in the interior? As
already pointed out we should in the rst place think of the city as
the economic and political centre capable of providing generous support to religious institutions. However, the matter is not so clearcut. We encounter here again the problem of impermanence we
already noticed on the coasts. Though not to the same extent as the
coastal port town, the inland towneven imperial citieslacked the
determination to persevere that characterised even the smallest
European town. Basically, what distinguished the European town,
was its corporate freedom, harking back to the late Roman coloniae,
municipia and civitates with their formal constitutions and autonomy.
This particular jural status had far-reaching consequences. It meant
that it was protable to invest in ones town, in its prosperity, institutions and defence. This again was a powerful incentive not to relinquish ones town in adversity and to defend it till the bitter end. All
this made for the permanence of the European town and gave it its
unique character. Its counterpart, however, in the world of the Indies
was utterly disposable. Thus the Mughal Empire, precisely at the
time of its vigorous expansion, did not have a permanent capital.
The name of the imperial centre, urd"i mu'all, the exalted army
camp, is signicant. It was indeed a mobile court and army camp
and as such it did move about. Only during the long decline of
imperial power it became xed at Delhi.
10
See Stephen F. Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mappilas of
Malabar, 14981922 (Oxford, 1980), p. 53 (referring to an Arabic chronicle quoted
by R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese o the South Arabian Coast, p. 117).
36
11
Cf. A.H. Hourani in A.H. Hourani and S.M. Stern (eds.), The Islamic City
(Oxford, 1970), pp. 1620, where he speaks of the agro-city as the basic unit
of Near Eastern society. His description also ts South Asian cities. It should be
noted that the Middle Eastern Islamic cities Hourani has in mind, though originally endowed with Roman constitutions, had already by the fth century practically lost their autonomythis in contrast to those in the western part of the Roman
world (see A. Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity (London and New
York, 1993), p. 168).
12
On the heavy impact of environmental change in the Indian Ocean area
through natural causes see A. Wink, From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean:
Medieval History in Geographic Perspective, Comparative Studies on Society and History,
44 (2002), pp. 416445. Wink rightly draws attention to the part of the uncontrollably shifting course of the great rivers in the impermanence of cities, turning
the Indian Ocean area into one of environmentally disrupted human settlement,
of lost civilizations, of lost cities (p. 439).
37
6
In this respect the coasts do not stand by themselves. They share
their characteristicsopenness, mobility, uidity, a oating and heterogeneous population and facility of long-distance tracwith particular mainland areas that form frontier zones, as coastal areas also
do. As the littoral (and its coastal shipping) forms a frontier zone
between the open sea and the agrarian inland, so do the passages
stretching between the uncultivated wilds and the densely settled agricultural areas.
When we speak here of frontiers, we should not think of boundaries in the modern sense of imaginary lines enclosing a particular
territory and setting it o from similarly enclosed territories surrounding it. These modern borderlines do not facilitate mobility and
communication but, on the contrary, cut through and obstruct the
cross-boundary lines of communication. The notion of enclosing and
separating boundaries by itself is, of course, not only modern. Typically
modern is only its exclusive practice. We know the cruel consequences of this practice.
Traditionally there was also a contrasting, more organic, notion
that starts from lines of communication andas opposed to the
enclosing and excluding boundarystresses mobility and complementarity. This notion is exemplied by the pattern formed by a
small centre from which start radial lines, or rather paths or roads,
running to the tour quarters. This pattern is attested in ancient and
classical Indian texts. It corresponds to the Javanese notion of montjopat, that is a quincunx formed by a central settlement and four
outlying villages. It is equally present in the premier princely state
of Malaysia, Negri Sembilan, the Nine Negeris, consisting of a
small centre surrounded by two rings of four districts.13
This centre-cum-radials pattern we can recognize also in classical
Rome and the great roads that, starting from there, ran through
and united the orbis terrarum. The Roman Empirelike other traditional empireswas not primarily dened by territory, as the modern state is, but by its roads. Empire building was road building.
13
J.C. Heesterman, Two Types of Spatial Boundaries, in E. Cohen, M. Lissak,
and U. Almagor (eds.), Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honor of S.N. Eisenstadt
(Boulder and London, 1985), pp. 5972.
38
There was, of course, the famed fortied limes surrounding the Empire.
But it is signicant that the word limes primarily means path or
road, especially a lateral road crossing another, usually more important one.14 It is mostly viewed as a fortied boundary line separating the Roman from the barbarian world. Apart from its military
function it is especially the communicative and economic aspect that
stand out.
In the frontier zone marked by the limes the two contrasting boundary conceptionscentre-cum-radials as against enclosing boundary
linemeet each other. The limes, or rather the trac artery covered by it, forms the most important lateral connection of the roads
that fan out to it and nd their continuation in the trade routes
beyond the limes. The fortications on the limes were at the same
time checking points for incoming and outgoing trade as well as
markets. When we further consider the intensive movement of goods
in both directions and the sizeable capital inux for paying the garrisons and for building and supplying the fortications we cannot
but conclude that the frontier zone rather than the fringe of civilisation was an economically privileged and expansive area with an
important radiation and full of potential for the future. One might
even wonder, in how far the frontier might threaten to become an
incontrollable drain weakening the core areasas indeed appears to
have happened eventually to the Roman Empire. It would seem
as I shall argue further onthat the Mughal Empire suered a comparable fate.
Before we return to the Indies and their mainland frontiers there
is still one more feature that calls for our attention. The frontier is
determined by climate and ecology. This is well-illustrated by the
Roman Empires Arab-Syrian frontier in the Middle East. The roads
that farm its care follow the desert line between 100 and 250 mm.
rainfall per year.15
14
Th. Mommsen, Das Weltreich der Caesaren (Vienna and Leipzig, 1933), p. 132.
Mommsen speaks of an original Grenzweg. Der Limes ist also die Reichsgrenzstrasse,
bestimmt zur Regulierung des Grenzverkehr dadurch dass ihre berschreitung nur
an gewissen Punkten gestattet, sonst untersagt war. See further the recent study
by C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Baltimore and London, 1994).
15
For the ecological background of the Roman Frontiers, see Whittaker, Frontiers,
pp. 8697. For the eastern frontier: p. 93 and gure 26 on p. 96.
39
7
Comparable natural conditions though not as sharply determine the
inland frontiers of the Indian subcontinent, as well as their connective function. They are directly related to the basic divide that opposes
densely populated agricultural tracts to those areas that do not lend
themselves to agrarian sedentarisation, either because of aridity or
because they are mountainous or densely forested. The divide recalls
the classical contrasting pair of grma and araya, settled track as
against wildernessa contrast that is the warp and weft of Indian
history and culture.
It is the stretch of large, open, arid spaces that distinguishes the
Indian subcontinent from Southeast Asia. It links up with the arid
zones of the Middle East and Central Asia and at the other end
reaches down into the southern part of the subcontinent. The transitional zones between the well-watered agrarian areas and the arid
nomadic spaces form the inner frontiers as well as the corridors
for trade and trac, connecting the agrarian core areas with each
other and with West and Central Asia. No less important, they run
uplike the great navigable rivers such as Ganges and Industo
that other frontier, the limes-like littoral, nding their continuation
beyond it in the sea-lanes. With the maritime frontier the inner frontiers share the features of mobility and openness and by the same
taken they also are zones of often violent conict between expanding agriculture and aggressive nomadism. It was through these corridors that the mounted archers from Central Asia could penetrate
into India and eventually conquer it. In short, they are the zones
of maximum tension, where the action is.
Not surprisingly we often nd the important political centres not
in the agricultural core areas where we would expect them to be
situated, but in the border zones adjoining the arid areas. Thus Delhi
and Agra lie right in the transitional corridor between the fertile
Ganges basin and the arid zone, leading via the Deccan plateau to
southern India. In a similar way it was the maritime frontier that
provided British India during a century and a half with its eccentrically situated capital Calcutta.
40
9
But now, what can this disquisition on frontier zones tell us about
islamization and, more generally, about the integration of the Indian
16
J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship,
and Society (Chicago, 1995), p. 169f. On the historical signicance of the interaction
of arid and monsoon India see J. Gommans, The Silent Frontier of South Asia,
Journal of World History, 9 (1998), pp. 125, and his Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers
and High Roads to Empire, 15001700 (London and New York, 2002), pp. 737.
17
See Kol and Van Santen, Geschriften, p. 307.
41
18
R.M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 12041760 (Berkeley, Los
Angeles and London, 1993), pp. 7177. Even if this tale is taken to be no more
than a hagiographic construction and the underlying reality reduced to a peacable
transition from a pastoral nomadic to a sedentary agrarian life, as Eaton suggests,
the pattern of the Su warrior striving for both inner and external conquest is no
less signicant. In fact it is widespread and well-known. Similarly we know the
Hindu warrior ascetic, cf. Monica Horstmann Warrior Ascetics in Eighteenthcentury Rajasthan, in M.A. Gautam and G.K. Schokker (eds.), Bhakti in Current
Research 198285 (Lucknow: Kern Institute Miscellanea 10, n.y.), pp. 4355, and
her On the Dual Identity of Nagas, in D.L. Eck and F. Mallison (eds.), Devotion
Divine: Bhakti Traditions for the regions of India. Studies in Honour of Charlotte Vaudeville
(Groningen, 1991), pp. 25571.
42
10
The change from itinerant warrior to settled farmer was anyway a
well-known pattern with an ancient pedigree that has left its traces
as far back as the Vedic ritual texts.19 In this way, then, Islam managed to create its own settled space in the open frontier where there
was land suitable to be turned into arable. Indonesia too oers examples of Islam creating its own space by means of forest clearance.20
It will be clear, though, that here again scriptural religion and learning did not have much of a chance to ourish. The conditions of
agrarian development require an other type of people, namely peasants. Here, as elsewhere, the frontier develops her own, particular
culture, alien to scriptural universalistic orthodoxy and based on the
devotion to holy men and their tradition.21
It were indeed such holy men, itinerant Su preachersnot the
rulers or the men of scriptural learning, the 'ulamwho carried
Islam forward. Instead of 'ulam the Indian world had its su shaikhs;
or rather, in the Indian world the Su shaikh came to full the function of the 'lim. The great time of the 'ulam and scriptural orthodoxy was still to come in the eighteenth century and even more in
the nineteenth century under the divisive impact of colonial rule and
reformism, stressing communal identity. As it was, however, Islam
remained very much a matter of intensely local interest; the cult of
19
J.C. Heesterman, Warrior, Peasant and Brahmin, Modern Asian Studies, 29
(1995), pp. 63754.
20
Cf. Lombard, carrefour, II, p. 111, explaining that Islam acted as the moteur
principal du dfrichement. It was the conqute de la rizire sur la fort (Vol.
III: Lhritage des royaumes concentriques (Paris, 1990), p. 9).
21
On the particular culture of the frontier marches, alien to the ocial centres
of power and orthodoxy cf. P. Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1938),
pp. 1632.
43
holy men and their tombs, as well as the mystic orientation of Susm
easily tied in with Hindu beliefs and practices and consequently exercised a strong local appeal.
On the other hand Susm did have the rudiments of a pan-Islamic
organisationin fact the only one availablein the farm of its various orders or brotherhoods and the chain of their hospices or khnqhs stretching along the trade routes. So, Susm was practically
predestined to be the vehicle of the propagation of Islam, penetrating into the agrarian interior and pushing forward the agricultural
frontier. As the case of Shah Jalal illustrates, Su preachers did so
both as warriors of the faith and as peasant pioneers conquering the
wilderness.
It also reveals the underlying pattern of the integration of the
Indian world. At the root of this pattern was the complementarity
of the mobile and the sedentary worlds. Both needed the others
resources. But complementarityto be eectiverequired that their
forces be balanced, so that the one could not dominate over the
other and ruin the exibility of their interaction. The dense web of
agrarian relations and their restrictive regulation could not be imposed
on the libertarian rgime of the mobile zones without fatally impairing trade and trac, nor could the libertarian lack of regulation,
governing the mobile zone be introduced in the sedentary zone without working havoc. The basic principle, exemplied by the Mughal
Empirein fact largely preceding Muslim rulewas the exible
maintenance of the precarious balance between the two contrasting
zones.
11
Yet, in the end, that is since the middle of the eighteenth century,
the balance was fatally disturbed, causing the nal collapse of the
Mughal Empire. The cause was the accumulation of resources in
the coastal frontier zone, which no doubt stimulated the economy
of the interior but even more exercised a magnetic attraction on the
interiors commercial and manufacturing resources. In the end India
was, as it were, turned inside out. Conversely, the accumulated
resources on the coast, seeking an outlet, overwhelmed the interior.
A sign of this development was the rapid commercialisation of local
or regional political power.
44
What this meant was already shown early on, in the 30s of the
seventeenth century, albeit still in a fairly harmless form, when the
Dutch East India Company, with its comparatively huge and concentrated nancial resources, entered the indigo producing district
of Bayana, near the imperial centre Agra, and thereby threatened
to undermine the delicate web of agrarian relations which involved
socio-political power as welland near the imperial centre at that.
At that time it was still possible to restore the balance by the simple means of declaring a local government monopoly of indigo.
Whether the monopoly did produce any great prots is not known,
nor did it last. But it did stop the Companys operations in the
Bayana area.22
This example illustrates, why the inland regimes were inclined to
restrain trade and trac so as not to disturb agrarian relations.
Moreover, though clearly in need of the commercial, nancial as
well as military resources of the mobile coastal and arid zones, they
had good reasons to be suspicious of the powerful merchants and
nanciers, especially those of the coasts who escaped their control.
Thus we see in the seventeenth century, at the time of strongly
increasing maritime trade, the Burmese rulers turn their back to the
sea, moving their capital from Pegu on the Irrawaddy delta to inland
Ava and concentrating on the rice cultivating middle Irrawaddy valley. In the same period the North Javanese coast was overrun and
subdued by the inland ruler of Mataram, in fact leaving control of
the maritime connections to the VOC.
Although the Indian Mughal rulers incidentally also turned against
the maritime powers on the coasta particular point of irritation
being the fortications of the European settlementsthere was no
consistent forceful reaction against the increasing power of the coastal
centres. The interdependence of the coastal zone and the broad
trac corridors of the interiors arid zones had grown too intense
to be dissolved. This is, however, dierent in Southeast Asia, where
there were no such arid zones that invite trac. Instead the agrarian inner frontier is marked by mountainous or densely forested areas
enclosing broad cultivable planes or valleys. Here, apart from rivers
in so far as navigable, the dominant trac corridors were the sea-
22
45
lanes, especially those of the Malay world between the Indian Ocean
and the Far East. Yet both the Indian subcontinent and Southeast
Asia underwent a common uninterrupted secular process of integration, its main avenue being the coastal frontier zones and the
sea-lanes. Understandably the Indian subcontinent took a leading
role in this process through its long coastline jutting out into the
Indian Ocean and its mainland trac corridors. This had made the
Indianisation of both the subcontinent and, simultaneously, the wider
Indian Ocean region possible; later Islam was to a great extent mediated by India.
12
But if it was primarily thanks to its maritime interconnections that
the Indian Ocean world could for centuries develop into an ever
more integrated oikoumene, how then did these same connections
bring about the break-up of this oikoumene?
It was not just overwhelming military superiority, the celebrated
guns and sails, nor the economic force of the western maritime
powers on the coasts that denitively broke up the perennial integration round the Indian Ocean. Such disturbanceseven if temporarily catastrophichabitually evened out. What made the decisive
dierence was the divisiveness that characterised the western world.
It arose from an entirely dierent conception of society and polity.
This view stressed the sharply bounded unit as a separate world
complete in itself, exemplied by the territorial nation state as it had
slowly developed in western Europe in an age-long process that
reached its maturity in the eighteenth century, that is at the same
time that the western maritime powers broke out of their coastal
containment. The modern concept of the state entailed the view that
frontiers were no longer zones of inclusion but lines of exclusion.
This view resulted from rigid universalistic norms that resist exible
accommodation. They go beyond the shifting particularistic ties of
alliance and conict that govern traditional society. They strip the
individual subject of these ties. Set free from organic ties as well as
deprived of the protection they may give, the individual is ready to
be a member of an impersonal, mechanistically construed grouping,
say a nation or a scriptural orthodoxy. Although universalistic norms
were certainly not lacking, they were been to be transcendent and
46
23
L. Dumont, Homo hierarchicus: Le systme des castes et ses implications (Paris, 1966),
p. 107.
For anyone interested to learn what the result has been of over 200
years of VOC presence in India there are several options. By far
the most enjoyable thing to do would be to take sabbatical leave for
about six months and leisurely visit the remaining Dutch factories,
forts and cemeteries scattered along the Indian coast and inland.2
There are dozens of ne places in Kerala, Tamilnadu, Orissa, Bengal
and Gujarat and although most of them are rather neglected, they
still make an impressive sight. During my four years stay in India
in the 1990s, I visited numerous buildings and cemeteries in Surat,
Ahmedabad, Chinsura, and Cochin. After an often extensive search
for the VOCs presence it is a curious experience to see engravings
in Dutch on the tombs of deceased VOC servants and their family
at the graveyard in Ahmadabad, or to nd the Dutch drainage system in Chinsura still in use.
48
Going to the National Archives in The Hague would be an easier, but admittedly less enjoyable way to learn about the Dutch in
India. Quite a substantial part of the 1.4 kilometres of VOC archives
is devoted to India. The archives are indeed so massive that a large
part has not or hardly been studiednotwithstanding the substantive research over the last decades by historians such as Om Prakash
on Bengal, Arasaratnam and Subrahmanyam on the Coromandel
Coast, sJacob on Malabar, and Dasgupta and myself on Gujarat.
But why would anyone primarily interested in Indian history (and
not in VOC history) focus on the VOC archives at all? Ever since
the classics of W.H. Moreland on Mughal India, the rst historian
to make good use of Dutch archives on India, almost a century ago
now, the same questions remain. Was the presence of the Dutch in
northern India only a ripple in the ocean of a predominantly agrarian societyor at best of marginal importance to its total trade and
industrial production? Is the fact that the western ring are hardly
ever mentioned in seventeenth-century Indian chronicles and annals
not proof of the total lack of impact of these western traders? Or,
conversely, did the VOC make a dierence in India by its export
of millions of calicoes, many tons of indigo, opium and saltpetre and
by being the importer of quite substantial amounts of precious metals and copper? And to what extent were the Dutch able to translate their undeniable maritime dominance into inuence on land?
This article will certainly not give denite answers. But I do suggest that it is high time we should take a fresh look at some of the
standard stereotypes in Indian historiography; such as the widelyheld view that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was easily
domesticated in the existing order, or the view of western traders
being totally separate from and indeed irrelevant for the Mughal
polity.
The purpose of the article is twofold: rst to indicate some areas
in which the VOC may have had an impact on northern India
(Kerala, where the VOC had territory, is obviously dierent, and is
not considered here). And secondly, to enumerate a number of possible topics for further research.3 I will limit this article to the seventeenth century only.
A disclaimer would seem appropriate here, as I try to keep up with Indian historiography as an interested amateur, no longer as a full-time professional.
49
50
and from Surata lesson that was well understood by Indian ocials
and merchants alike. The limitations of a policy of aggression to
express its maritime dominance, however, also became obvious. Growing investments in Indias hinterland acted as a guarantee and security against a policy dominated by belligerent maritime behaviour.
Aicted Indian merchants were perfectly capable of mobilising court
factionsin fact, it is quite remarkable how quickly and easily Indian
merchants were able to express their grievances at the Mughal court
in Agra and Delhi. After several Dutchmen had been imprisoned
and the Companys goods conscated, the VOC was forced to repay
the damage. Obviously, the combination of trader and pirate had
its drawbacks.
The second aimkeeping away the Indian, mostly Gujarati,
merchants from reserved markets and destinations, especially the
Moluccaswas reached through tight control over the Moluccas and
through a policy of regulating international Indian shipping. Very
conveniently, the Dutch built upon the Portuguese pass (cartaz) system. By providing maritime passes for some destinations and withholding them for others the VOC tried to regulate Gujarati shipping.
It worked for the Moluccas and some other parts of he Archipelago,
but the policy of squeezing Asian traders into a Dutch dominated
trading system was never completely successful. Full control of all
Asian straits and shipping lanes went far beyond Dutch maritime
capabilities.
Apart from piracy and the pass system, a third means to translate maritime dominance was through maritime blockade. The rst
blockade against a Mughal port occurred in 1648 when the Company
tried to gain a better hold of the thriving tin trade between the
Malay peninsula and India. Hoping to stop, or at least substantially
diminish tin trade by Indian merchants the VOC banned all Indian
shipping between Aceh and Surat. Maritime passes were sold in
Surat only for acceptable Asian portsa policy frowned upon by
Mughal ocials, as it remarkably resembled a foreign power taxing
Indian merchants in India. The ocials in Surat reacted by forbidding the loading of VOC-ships in Surat and the whole aair escalated after the Dutch factory in Surat was plundered by a remarkably
well-organised group of thugs, acting no doubt with ocial consent
if not support. The Dutch agent in Agra, while trying to recover
the losses, was treated with contempt, with a Mughal nobleman
shouting angrily that the Dutch behaviour was an outrage: leave
51
the country, thats all I have to say to you! But the Company had
decided to continue what it had started, and blocked the port of
Surat in 1648. Two returning Indian ships with a cargo of over a
million rupees were captured. This naval blockade and the seizure
of Indian ships were meant to be a short, tactical action to enforce
concessions; it was never meant to jeopardise its position as trader.
Neither side was interested in further escalation, and after negotiations, the Indian cargoes were returned to its rightful owners and
the Dutch resumed their trading activities. It is hard to say who was
the winner in this conict. The agreement reached with the ocials,
stipulating that Indian traders would stop their trade in tin, was null
and void. A few years later the trade between Surat and Aceh thrived
as never before.
The same method of naval blockade was tried against the Portuguesewith more success. For several years around 1640 a Dutch
eet cut o all international shipping from Goa. A few times the
Dutch (and English) fought and won naval battles against the Portuguese, which greatly impressed the Mughals. With the Portuguese
power largely broken, local Company servants were instructed to
advise their masters in Batavia on the desirability of conquering
Portuguese coastal strongholds along the Indian west coast, such as
Diu, or Daman. Their advice was negative: for a trading company
having extensive interests in the hinterland, a power base on the
coast would yield insucient prots, commercially or strategically.
From these rather tumultuous conicts in the rst decades of the
seventeenth century the VOC drew several lessons. An important
one was the conviction that it was not so easy to translate maritime
dominance into an optimal trading position on land. Its substantial
investments in India were a guarantee against a continuous and full
use of its maritime dominance. Aicted Indian merchants made
good use of their networks to express their grievances in court. Nevertheless, as masters at sea the Dutch were able to deploy a substantial force and showed they were able to completely disrupt Indian
foreign tradeand the Mughals knew this. They accepted that their
authority was conned to land. As a Company servant once wrote:
the Mughals know that our ships with all their guns cannot enter
their country, and they leave the high seas to us. The awareness
that the VOC diered from normal foreign merchants had its consequences for the way the Company was dealt with. In correspondence with Batavia and the Republic, VOC servants sometimes
52
frankly admitted that the VOC and Indian merchants were treated
dierently. In their behaviour towards the Dutch the Mughals acted
very reasonably, to the amazement of their own nation. The
Mughals may have regarded the western traders simply as nomads,
patrolling the seas, as the Mughal historian Kha Khan reports.4
But at the same time they were quite aware of the need to provide
a preferential treatment to these powerful maritime entrepreneurs,
who rather confusingly combined the role of traders on land, and
soldiers at sea.
4
Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare, Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 15001700
(London, 2002), p. 164.
5
Om Prakash, The New Cambridge History of India, II,5: European Commercial Enterprise
in Pre-colonial India (Cambridge, 1998), passim.
53
alone there are over 200 lists on Indian shipping in the VOC archives,
covering the seventeenth and the eighteenth century. If studied systematically, it would seem possible to obtain a clearer picture of
long-term developments of Indian trade throughout the period. These
data could then be compared with the (much better documented)
data on western shipping and cargoes and may provide a better picture of overall developments.
Apart from the question of any impact of Dutch traders replacing Indian traders in some parts of Asia, there is the question of
impact on the economy within India. In a remarkable attempt to
quantify the impact of the Europeans, Om Prakash calculated that
between 1678 and 1718 in Bengal around 33,000 to 44,000 artisans
were producing directly for the VOC. For other areas in India, however, these detailed calculations seem hardly feasible, due to insucient
data. In Gujarat for instance the Company was a major buyer of
cotton goods: probably even the largest individual buyer. But total
demand by Indian merchants exporting to the Middle East was much
larger. For the famous cash crop indigo Bayana, grown near Agra,
the same applies: for many years in the seventeen century the VOC
was the major buyer, but total demand by other merchants was
much higher.
While it may be impossible to quantify Dutch impact on the economy, it would seem more fruitful to compare in a qualitative manner
the extensive data we have on Gujarat, Bengal, and Tamilnadu, and
look at both the similarities and dierences in market conditions of
artisans, especially weaving communities. My own work has indicated that there were huge dierences in market conditions between
Gujarat and Awadh in the interior. Gujarati weavers, mostly urban,
were rather well organised and Gujarat was clearly a sellers market. After the famine in 16301631 the VOC had to look for new
areas of supply, and even went as far as Awadh, east of Agra. There
they were able to compare market conditions and what struck them
most was the contrast between Gujarat, urban, well organised, oriented towards the world economy versus Awadh, rural based, and
for the most part producing for the local market. Weavers and local
powerful people in Awadh were much more willing to accept the
conditions of international traders such as the VOC than in Gujarat.
While in Gujarat the use of force against indebted weavers seemed
unthinkable in the seventeenth century, the VOC used force against
indebted weavers in Awadh quite regularly. And while in Gujarat
54
55
Political inuence
Going through ocial Mughal chronicles one is struck by the virtually complete absence of westerners. Contacts with westerners obviously did not t into the Mughal warrior idiom as expressed in the
6
H.W. van Santen, De VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan, 16201660 (Meppel, 1982),
p. 108.
7
Frank Perlin, The Invisible City: Monetary, Administrative and Popular Infrastructures in
Asia and Europa, 15001900 (Aldershot, 1993).
56
ocial annals. But this does not mean that contacts were absent.
Geleynssen de Jongh, the VOC agent in Agra in the 1630s, remarked
that he would visit the court almost daily to visit noblemen. He mentioned casually that on average he visited Asaf Khan, the most
inuential courtier of his times and brother-in-law to Shah Jahan,
once a week to do him honour. Whenever a specic issue would
come up he would double the number of visits. The Mughal noblemen seemed to be very interested in European aairs. During a
court visit in 1642 Shah Jahan inquired after the political situation
in Europe, and asked whether the Republic and Portugal had concluded peace, and which of the two countries was largeras to the
last question, the Dutchman certainly did not give the correct answer!
In fact, I feel the political role of the VOC has been rather neglected
thus far. A sort of political anthropology of Dutch contacts with the
court, based upon the published court visits by Van Adrichem and
Ketelaar, as well as upon many unpublished ones, is called for.
Not only politically, but also nancially there were contacts. To
transfer capital to the cotton areas in Awadh, the Company paid
the sum in Agra to the daughter of Shah Jahan, who had her jgr
in Awadh. Afterwards, the local manager of the princess supplied
the sum in Awadh. It is but one of the many examples of the integrated nancial system in Mughal India, in which merchants/nanciers
as well as ocials participated. The Dutch and English Companies
had access to capital deposited by courtiers with Indian nanciers.
Sometimes the VOC even borrowed directly from the royal treasury
(azna). In 1638, the local governor in Surat provided a 400,000mamds loan from the azna to the Company in Surat. However,
the Governor-General in Batavia and the Gentlemen XVII were
adamantly against borrowing from ocials, and were concerned that
complicated credit relationships would get the VOC stuck in a morass
of uncontrollable mutual obligations. The local director defended the
decision to borrow by arguing that through this loan the Mughal
governor would feel responsible for the VOC. But to no avail, in
contrast to the EIC the VOC remained extremely reluctant to gain
a foothold in the Mughal political domain through credit relationships. By its own choice, the VOC was extremely reluctant to become
a political entrepreneur in Mughal India.
57
Virji Vohra
The story of the imprisonment of Virji Vohra may identify some
elements of the complex relationships between Mughal ocials, Indian
merchants, and the western Companies. Two main characters were
players in the game: Virji Vohra, the famous Banyan merchant,
and Hakim Masih al-Zaman, the local governor in Surat. In addition to these two participants, high noblemen at court, the VOC,
and last but not least, competing Indian merchants played the key
roles. The stage was Surat, Agra and Lahore, and the timing 1638
until 1641. Thanks to the fact that the VOC was closely involved,
the episode is rather well documented.
No doubt Virji Vohra was one of the most successful and richest
merchants of the seventeenth century. The rst reference to him
dates back as early as the second decade of the seventeenth century,
while the last references date from the 1670s. Based in Surat, his
area of operations extended towards the Middle East and the Indonesian Archipelago. He had his agents all over Asia and owned his
own eet of ships. He led a consortium of Surat-based merchants
purchasing for many years the total cargo of the VOC ships. Apart
from his trading activities Virji Vohra was the leading nancier in
Surat. His opponent in the conict was the mutaadd, the Governor,
of Surat, Masih al-Zaman, titled akm, or doctor. He was about sixty
years of age, very grey, looking stately and honest, who served the
father of the king and the king himself for many years as a doctor.8
In the rst months of 1638 this akm put Virji Vohra in jail in
Surat. Was this an example of a Mughal functionary extorting money
from a very wealthy merchant; was he ripe for extortion as W.H.
Moreland concluded already in 1923? And was this not related to the
fact that the akm had rented his oce for a substantial sum, was
not able to pay the sum, and was looking for alternative sources of
income? Undoubtedly this played a role, but there was more at stake.
The origin of the conict dates from 1637, as the VOC, as usual
in those years, sold all its cargo to a consortium of Indian merchants,
headed by Virji Vohra.9 Year after year the same consortium oered
8
NA, VOC 1116, B. Pietersen to Gentlemen XVII, Surat, 10 January 1636,
f. 88r.
9
The advantage was that in this way the VOC itself did not have to arrange
58
the highest price for the Companys goods. A sceptical GovernorGeneral in Batavia suspected a private set-up between local Company
servants and this groupwhich was hard to prove, but very likely.
In Surat the special bond between Virji Vohra and the Company
was a source of great envy, because other entrepreneurs, merchants
as well as Mughal ocials, were eager to get a piece of the pie. In
1637, two ocials, Mirza Mahmud and Amin Beg, respectively shahbandar (harbour master) and commissioner of Surat, were interested in buying all spices, and approached the VOC Director for
this. What they did not know was that they were too late; the
Company had already secretly sold them to the consortium of Virji
Vohra. In order not to oend the ocials the VOC stated a selling
price, but much higher than the actual one the consortium paid.
This turned out to be not such a smart move. The ocials got wind
of the deal and were so outraged that they fulminated against the
merchants of the consortium.10 Out of spite the transport of goods
from the VOC ships to the warehouses of the consortium was forbidden. The Dutch Director immediately threatened not to unload
the ships until the VOC had been ocially assured that it could
sell to whomever it wanted. This worked and for the time being the
dispute seemed to have been solved. What remained, however, was
the hatred against Virji Vohra, who had a virtual monopoly in
Mughal India on imported goods of the VOC, and made good prot
through this.
When, in early 1638 Virji Vohra was imprisoned in the mutaadds
house, the VOC Director in Surat gave two reasons: the envy towards
Virji Vohra and the fact that the VOC had scored points o the
Mughal ocials.11 It was claimed that the imprisonment took place
at the instigation of merchants from Surat, who seriously envied Virji
Vohra, because he had a virtual monopoly in Mughal India on
imported VOC goods. In Surat, the merchants had no other means
the dicult distribution of goods in northern India. A second advantage was that
by posing as a wholesaler and not as a retailer, the VOC created the possibility to
sell the cargo all at once, and was able to reap the prots immediately.
10
NA, VOC 1127, B. Pietersen to A. van Diemen, Surat, 18 April 1638,
f. 123.
11
NA, VOC 1127, B. Pietersen to A. van Diemen, Surat, 18 April 1638,
f. 123v.
59
12
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, C. Jansen Silvius to W. Geleynssen
de Jongh, Ahmedabad, 26 August 1638.
13
Ibid.
14
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 101, W. Geleynssen de Jongh aan
B. Pietersen, Agra, 5 June 1638.
15
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 7 June 1638.
16
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 20 June 1638.
17
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 101, W. Geleynssen de Jongh to
B. Pietersen, Agra, 12 July 1638.
60
18
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 18 July 1638.
19
Ibid.
20
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 7 October 1638.
21
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 18 July 1638.
61
high ranked nobleman Jafar Khan from Agra wrote a letter about
the case to an ocial in Surat, but this letter was cunningly intercepted by the mutaadd.
Some weeks later, Virji Vohra was chained and not seldom threatened with beatings. The Mughal ocial continued to collect serious oences the nancier could be charged with. To achieve this,
he went as far as torturing people. Under pressure they declared
that Virji Vohra had committed adultery and that he had committed murder. In the meantime the Virji Vohra case caused serious
tension between the ocials in Surat. The Governor had, refraining from informing the mutaadd, reported earlier to the king about
the imprisonment, as well as about the loan from the treasury, with
which the Dutch had been granted without the courts consent.22
Through those mutual oences the relationship between local ocials
had become rather hostile. In October 1638 the news was released
that the mutaadd ordered again a sound trashing for Virji Vohra
and his two sons. By torturing he hoped to nd out in what business or goods Virji Vohra had invested his capital. Meanwhile he
wrote the court that the merchants capital was worth forty lkh (four
million rupees), but he had only been able to retrace 6 to 7. Virji
Vohra did not give in to all the violence, and endured it with
courageous bravery.23
When the court received so many dierent and conicting signals
about the aair, the Great Mughal had enough of it and he sent
out an aad (an ocer directly serving the Great Mughal) from
Burhanpur, and ordered to bring Virji Vohra, and the prosecutors
to the court, so that the case could be examined down to the last
detail. The news that a delegate from the Great Mughal was sent
out for both plaintis and accused to report in person at the court,
alarmed people in Surat who had accused him and had given him
real trouble, concerned about their futures.24 Again we notice that
the aair was not simply a solo-action by the akm; he was incited
to action by others. Indeed, the aad arrived with a warrant that
22
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 7 October 1638.
23
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 25 October 1638.
24
Ibid.
62
summoned the Governor, Virji Vora and the accusers at court. The
mutaadd was insolent and refused to obey the order, since he was
concerned about the outcome of the investigation. A blazing row
between the two gentlemen was the result, taking place in the presence of the VOC-Director and other merchants! Harsh words were
spoken, but the aad left empty-handed.25
A month later, in November 1638, while Virji Vohra and his family were still imprisoned, the succession of the akm by a new mutaadd
was announced in Surat. Mir Musa, the new mutaadd who had held
oce in Surat before, was an old acquaintance of the Company.
There seems to have been no relation between the fact that the
Governor was replaced just then and the Virji Vohra-aair. Mir
Musa was simply prepared to pay a much higher rent than his predecessor. The new Governor arrived in the city in early 1639, and
he was received joyfully.26 Whereas the akm just previously had
refused to travel to court with Virji Vohra and his accusers, he
changed his strategy out of sheer necessity. He ordered the release
of Virji Vohra and sent him, while he was still chained, to the court.27
It was not without reason, was the Directors comment in Surat,
that the akm got his nickname the camel, because he never let
go of what he has in his possession!28 Even though he was removed
from oce, he did indeed not intend to give up and he was determined to plead his case against Virji Vohra in court personally.29
In the meanwhile, one of Virji Vohras sons requested the VOC
in Agra to stand surety for a payment in case Virji Vohra would
want to negotiate a loan. The Director in Surat granted the request
and instructed the VOC servant in Agra accordingly, because, like
he said, it would not harm the VOC in any way. The Company
would not be held responsible for this promise; Virji Vohra had
enough resources at his disposal for his nal release and he was not
in need of sureties.
The stage moved towards Agra and the Mughal court. At the end
25
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 107, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 30 October 1638.
26
NA, VOC 1132, B. Pietersen to Gentlemen XVII, Surat, 22 January 1639,
unf. 679v.
27
Ibid.
28
NA, VOC 1119, B. Pietersen to A. van Diemen, Surat, 23 June 1636, f. 1839.
29
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 110, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 19 December 1638.
63
30
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 103, W. Geleynssen de Jongh to B. Pietersen, Agra, 25 March 1639.
31
Ibid.
32
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 103, W. Geleynssen de Jongh to B. Pietersen, Agra, 30 July 1639.
33
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 110, B. Pietersen to W. Geleynssen de
Jongh, Surat, 24 June 1639.
34
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 97A, W. Geleynssen de Jongh to
B. Pietersen, Agra, 27 August 1639.
64
very much in a hurry. The next months, the VOC received only
sporadically information about the developments as the case was
taken to the court in Lahore. By January 1640 the case still had not
appeared in court.35 Shortly after that, Geleynssen himself left Agra,
so that we do not have detailed information about the close of the
aair. Virji Vohra must have regained his freedom one way or the
other, because in early May 1640 he left Agra for Surat, where he
arrived towards the end of June. His creditworthiness appeared not
to have suered immensely; because when he passed through Agra
on his way to Surat, he granted the East India Company a loan.36
The conict was still not over. The Mughal authorities had tried
earlier to get hold of the loan Virji Vohra had granted the English
and Dutch, but with no success. Now the western merchants were
prohibited to repay him their loans. This was against the farmn,
carried by Virji Vohra, and it cost Virji Vohra 10,000 rupees slush
money paid to Mir Musa before he was given permission to receive
his own money.37 Besides, it was revealed that Virji Vohra had stored
almost 200,000 rupees in a chest in the Dutch factory, since he considered it too dangerous to keep the money in his home. As an
excellent merchant, he had, during his imprisonment, sounded the
VOC about the possibility of negotiating a loan. The Company,
good merchants just like Virji Vohra, had been willing to do so,
but they had requested a lower interest than the current market
interests!38
Only in mid-1641 did peace rule, at least for the time being. Virji
Vohra had regained his freedom on payment of a few hundred thousand rupees. The ocial gift for the Great Mughal had come to,
according to reports, a 100,000 rupees. No doubt, he had to pay
certain noblemen an amount many times larger than the gift, to
make sure they cared about his case and to have a nger in the pie
when it came to decision making. His creditworthiness and his career
as nancier and successful merchant had not suered considerably.
During the imprisonment, his sons had continued the trade on a
modest scale. Upon his return, Virji Vohra again joined the con35
NA, Collectie Geleynssen de Jongh, 97A, W. Geleynssen de Jongh to
B. Pietersen, Agra, 30 January 1640.
36
NA, VOC 1134, Extract C. Weiland to P. Croock, Agra, 30 May 1640,
unf. 534.
37
Ibid.
38
NA, VOC 1134, P. Croocq to A.v. Diemen, Surat, 26 October 1640, f. 149v.
65
sortium that purchased the VOCs goods. Neither would the accuser
Masih al-Zamans career suer from the conict. At the end of 1639,
he took up oce as mr smn, head of the royal workshops.
During the following years the Mughal ocials and the Indian
merchants envy towards this Indian merchant, monopolising VOCs
imported goods year after year, would live on indeed. The Mughals
were extremely focused on these gains and they kept looking for
ways to cream o the prots.39 In the 1650s, the Governor in Surat,
under the authority of the Great Mughal, imposed a special 100,000rupee levy on Virji Vohra on account of the exorbitant prots he
was assumed to make given his special relationship with the VOC.
The VOC lodged a complaint with the court, fearing ocial interference in its trade. According to the VOC servant at that time in
Agra, Shah Jahan showed a displeased reaction to the VOCs complaint. Translated from Persian, he said presumably something like:
Virji Vohra is my subject and given his richness the levy is only
small. And by the way, this is none of the Dutchs nor the Britishs
business. When the VOC persevered with sending complaints, Shah
Jahan became irritated and exclaimed: why is it that the Dutch
write so extensively about this Virji Vohra, in what way does it cause
them inconveniences?40 He did not cancel the extra taxes. The result
was that Virji Vohra himself went to the court to plead his own
case. This time he went of his free will and unchained, unlike what
happened in 1639. At the court, he was received in a respectable
manner and, in fact, it is reported that the Great Mughal gave him
an elephant, which was the greatest honour, and that several noblemen donated him eleven horses.41 The merchant returned with a
farmn, which contained the ingenious solution. The levying of taxes
was not abolished, yet the other participants in the consortium that
purchased the VOCs goods had to share in the costs pro rata to
come up with the levy. Through expensive gifts to the Great Mughal
and the noblemen the merchant passed part of the expenses wisely
onto his colleagues.
39
Apparently, the trade was so lucrative that in 1646, Virji Vohra proposed to
not only purchase the entire VOC load intended for India, but also the one intended
for Persia. He would sell the spices and other goods in Persia through his network.
The VOC rejected the proposal.
40
NA, VOC 1201, J. Berkhout to G. Pelgrom, Agra, 23 August 1653, f. 7201.
41
NA, VOC 1210, Dagregister Surat, 30 January 1656, f. 767.
66
67
42
Jos Gommans, Lennart Bes, and Gijs Kruijtzer, Dutch Sources on South Asia,
c. 16001825, Vol. 1: Bibliography and Archival Guide to the National Archives at The Hague
(The Netherlands) (New Delhi, 2001).
1
Research for this contribution has been made possible by a grant from the
Royal Dutch Academy of Science.
2
See, for example, the two good overviews by G.V. Scammel, Indigenous
Assistance in the Establishment of Portuguese Power in the Sixteenth Century in
D.M. Peers (ed.) Warfare and Empires (London, Variorum, 1997), and The Pillars
of Empire: Indigenous Assistance and the Survival of the Estado da ndia Modern
Asian Studies, 22 (1988), pp. 47389.
3
L. Felipe Thomaz, Goa: uma sociedade Indo Portugusa, in, De Ceuta a Timor
(Lisbon, 1994), pp. 24590.
70
4
D.H.A. Kol, The End of an Ancien Rgime: Colonial Wars in India 17981818
in J.A. de Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds), Imperialism and War (Leiden, 1989), pp.
2250.
71
trade of the East India Companies, or the boards allowed to conduct a monopoly trade in the Portuguese case. This left a bureaucratic and military establishment stranded which had to seek for
revenue in another way: by direct taxation of the Indian population
and by the land revenue.
Second, and this is critical in the present context, the increasing
military presence and the increasing reliance of all European states
on land revenue to pay for the army also resulted from increasing
Asian military pressure on the European states. This has many
reasons but the most important one was that, because the overhead
costs in the Indian Ocean trade were higher than those in the
European trade, the only way country traders could be assured of
a prot was by obtaining a monopoly over goods and eliminating
their Asian competitors. This was rightly conceived by the Indian
states as a direct assault on both their sovereignty and their taxrevenues. Hence they began to see the Europeans as a direct threat
in the eighteenth century. The Europeans no longer had to ght the
small forces of local potentates, as in the seventeenth century, but
rather the main armies of large Indian states. In turn this led to the
increasing militarising of the European settlements.
However, we have to be careful with the concept of the military
scal state. For John Brewers denition of the military scal state
is in some ways too general to be of much use.5 If a military scal
state simply means that it is a state levying taxes through a professional cadre of civil servants to pay for the expenses of armies
and eets and that it has a huge debt, then I doubt whether sixteenth-century Castille does not already qualify as such a state. The
Tudor state did not have much of a professional bureaucracy but
the Hapsburg Empire surely did. And this is true not only for Europe.
As recent revisionist studies of Portuguese India in the sixteenth
century have been arguing, it is all too easy to fall into the infamous black legend when dealing with Portuguese India. By sixteenth
century standards at least, the Estado was ruled by a thoroughly professional and highly committed bureaucracy.6
5
J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power; War, Money and the English State 16881783 (London,
1989).
6
For an overview see C. Madeira Santos, Goa a chave de toda a ndia. Perl poltico
da capital do Estado da ndia (15051570) (Lisbon, 1999).
72
7
Arquivo Histrico Ultramarino, Lisbon (AHU), Papeis vulsos da ndiano
inventarisadasnew numbering, Caixa 108, Mappa das receitas e depezas que teve
a fazenda Real em Goa, anno de 1760.
8
See V. Magalhes Godinho, Mito e mercadoria, utopia e prtica de navegar (sculos
XIIIXVIII) (Lisbon, 1990), pp. 3458.
9
W.K. Firminger (ed.), The Fifth Report on East India Company Aairs 1812, 3 Vols
(Calcutta 1917/ New York, 1969), Vol. 3, p. 260.
10
For the early seventeenth century see V. Magalhes Godinho, Les nances de
ltat Portugais des Indes (Paris, 1971).
11
P.K. OBrien, Trade, Economy, State and Empire, in, The Oxford History of
the British Empire. The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), p. 67 see also F. OGorman,
The Recent Historiography of the Hanoverian Regime Historical Journal, 19 (1986),
pp. 100520.
73
12
74
or less were the Portuguese army, but it also held true for Goa. There
too the dalgos were assisted by private militias, often consisting of
their black slaves. Moreover the countryside of the Praas do Norte
in particular, but to some extent of Goa too were still heavily armed
societies, where most peasants had spears and often matchlocks at
home. This was one factor accounting for the heavy rate of casualties in robberies and duels in Portuguese India: whereas in Portugal
you count so many assaults, in India you count so many casualties,
it was said in the seventeenth century.13
In the eighteenth century, however, the military scal state began
increasingly to curtail this private exercise of violence. The state outlawed the private feuding amongst villages, always rife in India (and
Goa was in that respect no exception), which habitually led to bloodshed. The chiefs (gavcars) of the village of Coculim in Salcete testied
that when there was great unrest (grandes alteraes) between their
village and neighbouring Veroda, a feud which had come to such
a pitch that even the parish priest of Coculim was killed by the people of Veroda, Govind Rao, captain of the sepoys (cabo das cipayes),
had intervened by sending his boys (os seus lhos) to interpose themselves betwixt the two villages and by disarming the two parties.14
Furthermore the state increasingly curtailed the private possession of
arms. One of the rst regulations emanating from the administration in Goa on the annexation of the Bicholim, Zimbaulim and
Ponda districts (the Conquistas Novas) was a prohibition to wear swords
and carry rearms and spears in public. The sepoy guards of the
Conquistas Novas were to impose nes on peasants in possession of
arms and to conscate the weapons found.15
Indo-Portuguese lascarins
The main instrument for this pacication was the modern sepoy
army. The modern European army in India (English, French and
Portuguese and Dutch) had three characteristics which made it
13
R.J. Barendse, Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century
(Armonk N.Y., 2002), p. 115.
14
AHU, ndia, Caixa 101, Carta de Certido (c. 1720).
15
AHU, ndia Caixa 309, Bando geral que deve ser publiado de som de instromentos bellicos nas trs provinias de Ponda, Zambaulim e Canocana (1768).
75
dierent from traditional Indian armies. Firstly, as is widely recognised in the literature, was its emphasis on drill. Indian armies had
long used drill, but the object of such drills was to develop the individual ghting skill of the soldiers. The object of modern drill by
contrast was to turn the soldier into an obeying automaton who was
interchangeable with the man next to him. This ideally entailed that
European-trained infantry could deliver a higher volume of re than
Indian soldiers could. In the Estado da ndia the sepoys were to be
drilled twice (and the mounted forces three times) a week. Secondly,
the troops were permanently quartered in barracks. They were not
allowed to roam around or leave the district in which the barracks
were located, when they were on leave, without explicit permission
thereto by their commanding ocers.16 The third distinguishing characteristic was command and control. In traditional Indian armies
the soldiers were dependent on patronage of their leaders. The ocers
were hence not interchangeable and the various wings of the army
had separate commanders who might not obey commands from
headquarters. The problems in co-ordinating larger armies made
Indian armies extremely vulnerable to defeat in pitched battles.
The distinguishing characteristic of this new army thus was drill,
quartering in barracks, and command and control, and not so much
its weaponry. Since in a comparison between the armament of Indian
states and European armaments in India I would obviously have
to deal with European states other than the Portuguese this would
surpass my compass here.17 Suce to say that in the eighteenth century Portuguese weapons were in some ways slightly superior to
Indian weapons. This was particularly so for infantry weapons: eld
guns and grenades which were entirely supplied from Portugal in
the eighteenth century, unlike in the seventeenth when the Portuguese
partly fabricated their arms in India and often used captured Indian
ones. This would obviously not have made sense if such Portuguese
arms were no better than Indian ones.
But let us not fall into a technological x. This slight superiority in weapons did not spare the Estado the humiliation of its worst
ever defeat. In 1739 the Estado da ndia hovered as close to the brink
16
76
18
19
See S.K. Mhamai, The Sawants of Vadi and the Portuguese (New Delhi, 1984).
AHU, ndia, Caixa 305, Conde de Ega to Crown, 1 February 1760.
77
paigns were initially still pretty much fought out in terms of a typical ancien-rgime kind of Indian warfare.20
Take, for example, the case of Pedro Vicente de Vidal during his
expedition against the des of Uspa in Bicholim in 1747. In Bicholim
his two hundred sepoys were to be quartered in and maintained
through the revenue of villages assigned to the Portuguese by treaty
between the Estado and their ally Satroji Raja, then still formally a
subject of Savantvadi. Vicente de Vidal was ghting on behalf of
the Marathas and his normal way of ghting was virtually identical
to that of the Marathas. He had to raise the bamboo fences and
burn the houses within the des s fortied compound with its earth
wall surrounded by bamboo fences. He was also to try to capture
his family members and those of his allied warlords, Ragunat Pant
and Zabardast Khan, so as to force them into negotiations with the
Portuguese. In the meantime he had to incessantly go on with raiding and to capture all the cattle which is, when it is seized, to be
sent to Bicholim (fortress) and placed under proper guard. The terminology is interesting here: this kind of small, highly formalised,
warif not simple robberyconstantly with an eye towards strengthening ones bargaining position was more or less alien to metropolitan Portuguese practices. So the scribes of the chancellery resorted
to Marathi to describe it: De Vidal was to fazer rassoa (razzia karnen)
in Bicholim.21
The exchange of Conquistas Novas, however impressive they might
look on the map, with Praas do Norte was then not a good one.
And it was in fact only the loss of Bassein which nally relegated
the Estado da ndia to the status of a second-rate power in terms of
both its revenue and its population on the Indian west coast. But
through the allotment of huge subsidies from Portugal and Brazil
the Estado da ndia continued to be a rst rate military power on the
west coast. Those grants from the metropolis allowed the Estado to
continue employing a regular European troop strength of 1,600 to
2,000 men.
But such European troops were still very much auxiliary to the
Asian forces of the Portuguese in the eighteenth century and very
20
For which now see J. Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Frontiers and High Roads to
Empire 15001700 (London, 2002).
21
Bibliotheca Municipal, vora, Portugal, Cdice CXX/22, Instruo passado
a Pedro Vicente Vidal, Sargente Mor, enginheiro deste Estado, 20 June 1747,
f. 332.
78
22
Bibliotheca Nacional, Lisbon (BNL), Cdices Pombalina 667, Philipe Valaderes
to General of Bardes, 30 October 1752, f. 32.
23
AHU, ndia, Caixa 86, Noticias que se pode achar sobre a narao que fez
a cmara geral de Bardes, s.d. (1690).
79
soon as possible. Since they all seek shelter in ports where the
English have populations or factories, the best solution to the shortage of troops would be to demand from the English not to transport any Portuguese to Europe anymore. Caetano de Mello e Castro
also warned the king that the brahmans had as little enthusiasm to
enlist as the Viceroy was enthusiastic in enlisting them. Small wonder that according to the classic Iberian administrative practice
Caetano de Mello e Castro obeyed but did not implement the
order.24
Viceroy Conde de Sandomil had, the senado da cmara of Goa
thought, later on tried to raise a militia of 3,000 men from Goas
population but they had proven utterly useless during the Maratha
invasion of 1739, even though their ancestral homes were in direct
peril. The natives have not the slightest propensity towards the exercise of arms and the new attempt of the Conde de Ega to raise a
mercenary force of 500 soldiers from Goa would likewise, the council thought, prove to be an utter failure.25
Yet Dom Antnio de Noronha, bishop of Mylapur, (who ought
to have known since he was the main person in charge of the campaigns to pacify the Conquistas Novas and named general of Ponda
in reward)26 thought in 1764 that all this talk about the inhabitants
of Goa being useless to wear arms was but a racist subterfuge for
not trying to enlist them at all. It was a subterfuge for not paying
and feeding the soldiers properly besides; if they were no good anyway they deserved no proper pay either. The situation had become
so bad, Noronha thought, that even the Portuguese soldiers had to
resort to robbing shermen to get something to eat. Their own soldiers were turning out to be the most dangerous pirates on the
Mandovi. After all, Noronha argued, there was a diaspora of some
20,000 topazes from Goa in Kanara and on the Coromandel Coast,
many of whom pursued a career in the army. And some of them were
renowned throughout India. For example, in Goa it was rumoured
that the ruler of Mysore, Haidar Ali, had said that he could not do
without the services of Manuel de Sazoa and Christofo Rodrigus.
24
AHU, ndia, Caixa 104, Carta Regia, 10 January 1704 and answer thereto
December 1705.
25
AHU, ndia, Caixa 96, Petition, 6 March 1762.
26
I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da ndia, Livro 40, Carta Patente,
17 August 1763, f. 64v.
80
The rst was a goldsmith, the latter a shoemaker from the village
of Nagoa in Bardes.27
This diaspora from Goa derived mainly from the Catholic peasants in Bardes and Salcete, who being on the lookout for periodic
work in Candal and Sunda in the seventeenth century when there
was a severe problem of rural unemployment in Bardes, had shifted
permanently to the opposite shore and later moved to other parts
of India as well.28 Besides this Goan diaspora, there was a strong
Indo-Portuguese Lumpenproletariat in India, mainly deriving from Indian
untouchables converted to the Catholic religion. Ascertainly in
very caste conscious Keralathose dalit topazes found any other
career blocked, one of the few ways open for upward mobility to
the ambitious sons of such communities was to pursue an employment as a lascarin in the army, whether that be in the VOCs or
the EICs service or in that of Travancore.29 If that applied to Cochin,
Telicherry and Bombay it also applied to the Praas do Norte where
in the eighteenth century the bulk of the army was made up of
Catholic lascarins from two groups: the Bandaris or workers in the
toddy-trees and the untouchable (Catholic) rural labourers or Curumbis
(the modern Kunbis).
Captain James Inchbird, sent by the EICs board at Bombay to
mediate in the handing over of the Portuguese Moro fortress at
Chaul to the Marathas and where the English as mediators were to
station a force at Chaul in the interim, found his Portuguese counterpart Dom Franisco de Galenfels afraid that he discovers such
a malignant spirit in the padrees, that he is apprehensive they are
combining some ill design and afraid they will put the city in ames
if not prevented. He also found the Portuguese garrison close to
mutiny. This was partlythough Inchbird obviously did not say
thisbecause the very elite and very Catholic lascarins of Chaul
loathed the amateur and Protestant English force to whom they
had to surrender the fortress. It was surely partly because they had
not been paid and not received any provisions for one and a half
27
81
years. But it was above all, Inchbird thought, because the Chaul
lascarins feared that if they were to be sent to Goa they would end
their lives in misery. By virtue of serving His Catholic Majesty the
lascarins of Chaul were men of dignity and status amongst their fellow Curumbis in Chaul whereas, as Inchbird recognised, in Goa
they would be little more than castaways 30
The Curumbis of Chaul were not the only example of such permanent military colonies, who, if they were as poor as the surrounding villagersand if anything were even poorerstill derived
much of their dignity from being a servant of His Catholic Majesty.
Two hundred ve Bandaris from Chaul defend that fortication
without any pay but they are merely rewarded with liberty from
some local taxes and to a few, who have especially distinguished
themselves, is given a premium of 6 xeraphins monthly.31
Those bachelor mercenaries, living in improvised slums next to
the Moro, the forty seven settled and Christian Bandari families of
Bassein, as well as the seventy-seven similar Bandari families of Chaul,
were even by eighteenth-century Portuguese standards (and Portugal
was hardly Europes wealthiest country) a wretchedly poor community. They were living in little shacks and in the Portuguese revenue
terminology they were pensioneiros de seus senhores. They were landless
peasants and shermen (in the rivers) who had the status of glebi
adscriptae in both Chaul and Bassein.32
The Indo-Portuguese lascarins such as the Bandari communities of
Chaul derived their dignity from the pursuit of arms and from the
camaraderie among the members of the warbands rather than from
their salary. The hundred lascarins in the garrison at Daman too
were similarly stated to be all desperately poor and had mostly to
subsist on handouts of rice from the celereiro pblico (the public granary). The soldiers here are so poor, that they go around nude.
An aront to both decency and common sense, the Captain of
Daman thought. Yet though these too were by and large agricultural bonded labourers their pride and identity was derived from
30
Oriental and India Oce Collections, British Library, London (OIOC), P/341/11,
Bombay Public Consultations, James Inchbird to Bombay Board, 4 November
1740, f. 452.
31
AHU, ndia, Caixa 206, Copia da carta que o general do Norte escreveo ao
Sr. Vice Rey, 10 July 1733.
32
AHU, India, Caixa 109, Christianidade deste freguesia da Senhora de Madre
de Des, Cassabe de Baaim (1722).
82
being soldiers. And the EIC indeed widely recruited amongst these
topaz communities of Chaul and Daman. For the topazes there were
at a meagre pay of 5 rupees monthly about the cheapest skilled soldiers procurable on the Indian West Coast, the English thought.33
While the Portuguese garrisons in the north therefore did not give
a very good account of themselves, the most determined resistance
against the Marathas (and particularly in the frontier fortications
of the Praas do Norte who were devoid of any metropolitan
Portuguese troops, like the Tranqueira da Saibana where the 150 Indian
soldiers fought to the last man) was oered by those very same
Bandaris and by the amateur Curumbi soldiers. They are judged
to be merely workers in the palm trees, yet by spirit and by their
eort they are rather true servants of Mars certainly more than the
Portuguese, Noronha thought. Driven by the surge of a zealous
Indian folk Catholicism in the eighteenth century instilled by the
by then completely Indianparish clergy, this proletarian resistance against the Marathas was led by a Curumbi whom his brothers
in arms knew as the little carpenter.34
From among the topas refugees from Salcete, eeing from the
Marathas, the EIC at Bombay had hastily raised 170 men in four
topas companies in 1739. The Company had stationed them at Sion.
For the English feared that upon the fall of Bassein Bombay was
likely to be the next. They were, the Board initially thought, the
most skilled and the most highly motivated force on the Indian West
Coast, as they had proven during the lengthy siege of Chaul. Yet
on closer examination in 1743, the Governor of Bombay thought
that the topazes appeared to consider unheard-of insolence and insubordination as normal. There were complaints from their English
ocers that the topazes thought nothing of leaving their barracks and
going to eat in their huts; of taking leave without permit to visit
their families, who were still located in Salcete, whenever they liked;
or of insulting their ocers. Since of sepoys we can hire as many
as we like, it was decided to dismiss those lascarins behaving in a
mutinous manner. And as they must soon be in a starving con-
33
AHU, ndia, Caixa 109, Resumo das almas Christes na jurisdio de Damo
(1723); OIOC, P/341/13, Bombay Public Consultations, 20 July 1742, f. 325.
34
BNL, Fundo Geral, Cdice 553, Systema Marcial siatico, f. 155.
83
dition, this will be a means of making the others set a true value
upon the service for such pay as they now have.35
The proud Indo-Portuguese lascarins of the Praas do Norte stuck
to a rough sense of camaraderie amongst the ranks, and to a tradition of freely serving in arms. This tradition increasingly conicted
with the petty military chicken-shit (as it was called in World War
II) of the ever more hierarchic European armies of the eighteenth
century. This was not only the English experience though. The LusoIndian soldiers in Manuel Nunes Pintados company stationed in the
barracks at Rachol in 1744 were accused of not only not obeying
but even insulting their ocers without showing them any sign of
respect.
And why, in fact, should they have respected their ocers? There
are in this state many able and seasoned ocers of whom there are
but few who do not have scars of ancient wounds, the Conde de
Ega complained to the Crown in 1758. Yet these Indo-Portuguese
were commanded by senior ocers, who were all newcomers from
Portugal. Such reinois were generally still in the cradle when their
NCOs were already ocers and soldiers, the Viceroy complained.
Obviously, then, veteran Indo-Portuguese lascarins did not think they
were wont to pay much respect to such rookie ranking commanders. Not only were the NCOs not particularly motivated to encourage their soldiers to brave deeds if they saw their career blocked by
those reinois, it encouraged insubordination of the soldiers too.36 The
problem was basically that, since most Portuguese sent to the East
were convicts, the few soldiers who did volunteer to serve demanded
higher pay and higher military oce than they would have received
in Portugal. Hence often there are more ocers than soldiers in
India as was complained in 1703.
The general of Bardes complained that when ocers wanted to
punish some culprits among the soldiers in Nunes Pintados company, they formed a mutinous crowd. So that eectively the entire
company became an accomplice to a crime. Whilst in Europe there
would be severe corporal punishments on such acts of insubordination, in Portuguese Indiathough these penalties certainly existed
35
36
84
on paperthere was really not much one could do about it. In this
concrete case of collective insubordination any attempt to punish
only a few culprits would merely lead to the rest of the company
deserting to the mainland,37 Lascarin soldiers thus bravely followed their
leaders but they stuck to a strict moral code in which they would
follow only when they thought they were being treated properly.
And though they were very much of peasant stock themselves, the
lascarins were often seen by the peasants as a swarm of locusts rather
than as brave warriors defending them. In his burning indictment
of the entire colonial regime of the Estado da ndia under the motto
Regnum Dei est justitia called Estado do Estado da ndia, written in
1720, Diego Garcia de Sta. Theresa, then archbishop of Goa, voiced
the bitter complaints about the lascarin regular forces from the peasants of Goa. The soldiers, Garcia de Sta. Theresa wrote, raped
women, looted the inhabitants, stole sh from the shermen, or at
the very least they would demand free food and very likely free sexual services too, from the inhabitants of the aldeias. And however
much one complained to their ocers they would always look the
other way. That was partly because of the nearly normal insubordination of their lascarin bands of brothers. Ocers feared that if
they inicted corporal punishment on the soldiers, they might well
turn against them-indeed they might even be assassinated by their
own lascarins. And partly that was because if the soldiers got free
sustenance from the villages, the ocers could then pocket the money
received for the rations for their soldiers themselves. And if the government wants to punish them for such crimes the soldiers establish
themselves on the other side of the river. And then they immediately prepare a request to demand a safe-conduct to come back in
the form of a royal pardon.38
85
86
43
AHU, ndia, Caixa 78, inventarisada, Document 64, Certido, March 1733.
87
to be eligible for promotion only if they had served for at least four
years. The other change introduced was that the troops were to be
permanently quartered in barracks rather than having them live (as
was still normal in the beginning of the eighteenth century) in the
houses of the dalgos. Finally, Ericeira also instituted a separate regimental treasury.44
This was followed by a frantic spree of hiring sepoys under the
Conde de Alva for his campaigns to conquer Zimbaulim and for his
disastrous campaign to reduce the whole of Sunda and the Maratha
fortications there. From a force of a mere 1,800 men (still comparable to the Bombay army!), most of them doing not very demanding work in the fortications, Alva rapidly expanded the sepoy army
to a force of 4,000 men, of whom 500 were the elite Pathan troops.
By way of comparison, the entire regular armed strength of the East
India Company in 1758 is estimated by Bryant at 4,500 men.45
However, and here was obviously the dierence with the British, this
was a situation which the Portuguese could not sustain for very long
as it created a gaping hole in the entire budget of the Estado da
ndia. Conquistas Novas were simply not Bengal.46
This hiring spree attracted military adventurers from the entire
neighbourhood to submit themselves to become a vassal of His
Catholic Majesty. Partly because since the good lawyers of the Estado da
ndia were well trained in medieval law at the University of Coimbra,
the Portuguese stuck to feudal forms in legal documents until deep
into the eighteenth century. As an example of such a term of submission (as the Portuguese called it) consider the following from
1754.
As captain Chandra Parbhu, who is serving in Ponda has represented
to me that he wants to come himself with his people to serve this
state, I hereby grant licence to the General of Salcete to receive him,
he (the general of Salcete) being recommended thereto by the said
Chandra Parbhu, and he shall be given licence to enter with his people into our territory. And in the presence of all his sepoys he shall
44
vora, Cdice CXV/131, Regimento militar dado neste Estado pello Senhor
Dom Lus de Menezes, Conde de Ericeira, . 1112; ibid., Proviso, 19 July
1731, f. 123.
45
G.J. Bryant, The East India Company and its Army 16001778 (Unpublished
PhD thesis, University of London), p. 78.
46
AHU, Cdice 440, Lista das contas do V.Rey Conde de Ega mono de
1754, f. 7.
88
make a muster role of them, which shall then publicly be entered into
the general muster role of this state.47
Chandra Parbhu was an exceptional man foras his name indicateshe was a saraswath brahman, rather a-typical of the mainly
Maratha recruiters who were enfeofed by the Portuguese in the fties.
The saraswaths were generally a non-military community. But Chandra
Parbhu was certainly typical as he was but one of the many freewheeling independent military entrepreneurs-cum-petty landlords, called
jamadar or subehdar (from P. jam'adr; badr) in the Konkan, who
recruited from many dierent communities in the Konkan. And they
recruited in the Ghats too. For a very major part of the traditional
armies in the Konkan, and particularly in the settlements adjacent
to the Ghats consisted of tribal Bhils. So it was, for example, with
the 25 men in Portuguese service under headmen Naik Savant, who
come from the mountains of Leva.48
Yet another warband was the company of Fakir Muhammad Khan
raised at his own cost, which consisted of 32 men.49 Most of his
men appear to have been close relatives and in all likelihood they
were all from the same shing village in Candal where Fakir Muhammad Khan and Ibrahim Khan came from. The commanding ocers
of Fakir Muhammad Khans lascar were his brother and his uncle,
Azad Khan. Azad Khan died with most other chiefsof Ibrahim
Khans companywhen ghting with the Bhonsles in the village of
Assolna in the province of Bardes. If the lascar was very much a
family aair this did not mean that the men were any less courageous. Indeed, such close personal ties between a band of brothers might endow the soldiers with a fanatical sense of loyalty to
their commanding ocer and by extension to his liege, the king
of Portugal. Noronha for one thought that, as they so closely identied
with their commander, sepoys wereif led by a competent commanderas good, nay better, soldiers than Portuguese troops.50
Fakir Muhammad Khan asserted in his petition to the Goa administration that he had been faithfully serving His Catholic Majesty
47
BNL, Pombalina, Cdice 667, Governo do Mrques de Alorna, Portaria,
30 October 1752, f. 35.
48
AHU, ndia, Caixa 316, Memoria da depeza que importara o pagamento
das tropas na provinia de Ponda e Zimbaulim.
49
I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da ndia, Livro 37, Carta Patente,
10 September 1758.
50
BNL, Fundo Geral, 555, Systema Marcial siatico, f. 205.
89
over the past forty years in combat and garrison duty. And he should
therefore be rewarded in the traditional manner: namely by being
awarded a pension. Furthermore, as had always been the case before,
he should be allotted the right to directly name the ocers of his
company, whom he would select from his retinue himself. Abd alKhan, leader of a similar band of brothers, in the same year was
also allotted the right to serve as captain for a lascar which he has
raised at his own cost.51
The total number of the new regular sepoy force in service in
the Estado da ndia in 1771 consisted of 2,103 men, organised in companies of about 50 men each, with one captain and two sergeants
(alferes). Sepoys were paid according to the regiment on pay in 1754.
For a lieutenant, it was 14 xeraphins, raised to 20 xeraphins in 1764
monthly, while soldiers were paid 10 xeraphins, raised to 12 in the
same year.52 The troops stationed in fortications mostly had a surgeon attached and in most companies there was also an interpreter.
The sepoys appear to have rarely spoken Portuguese, except perhaps by learning some basic commands by root which were given
in Portuguese. The normal language in the sepoy force appears to
have been Konkani.
The sepoys consisted of regular and auxiliary troops. The auxiliary troops were basically the old war-bands of the allied desss in
the Konkan, who in return for becoming a vassal of the Estado kept
a prerogative to levy a number of sepoys as their retinue. Thus
Chandra Parbhus company, now stationed at Usgao, was levied
annually for a period of three months and received a reduced pay
of 8 xeraphins monthly. The same was true for the company of his
brother Mala Parbhu. This periodic service during the campaign
season reected an older practice in which the troops would only
show up during that season and would go back to their village to
sow rice afterwards. The 16th of June was generally seen as the
end of the military season amongst both the Portuguese and their
adversaries in Savantvadi in the beginning of the eighteenth century.53
The new sepoy army was an all-season force though.
51
I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da ndia, Livro 37, Carta Patente,
21 October 1760.
52
AHU, ndia, Caixa 108, Carta Regia, 24 April 1764.
53
I/ANTT, Conselho Geral do Santo cio, Cdice 287, Notiias da ndia
deste anno de 1725 athe 1726 (not paged).
90
Most regular troops were also by now neatly uniformed, regimented and garrisoned; the remainder of what originally had been
independent war-bands under the leadership of local military entrepreneurs. Some companies were still led by their old commanders.
Examples were the original Pathan companies of Shaikh Abd alRahman and Yusuf Khan, the Maratha warband of Sada Shivaji
Khamat, or the Koli warband of Ragoji Savant who (still) serves
as chief and jamadar of his own company.54
The new sepoy force in Portuguese service as of 1771 thus
clearly exemplied the passing from the ancien rgime to the military
scal state in Portuguese India. Whilst the auxiliary forces still had
many of the characteristics of the warbands of the ancien rgime, serving for the dry season only and living with their families in military
colonies rather than permanently being garrisoned in barracks, the
regular troops gradually passed from warbands to regimented forces.
In 1756 all troops in the Estado da ndia (the sepoy troops included)
were to be divided in numbered regiments and in regular companies. The Indian troops also switched from being clothed in white
bertangi, which were generally ordered from Daman, to the green
uniforms sent from Portugal.55
Most of the companies, while often keeping the older name of the
subehdar whom they once served were gradually allotted to (mostly
Indo-Portuguese) commanders. This was for example the case with
Ibrahim Khans former boys: a group of 20 sepoys. Command of
this company was given to the Indo-Portuguese soldier Joo Menezes
da Silva in 1758, because Ibrahim Khan had turned rebel and ed
to Vad.56
But the sepoys did not always easily give up their independent
life with their families in their military villages for the barracks; nor
did they give up gladly their freedom to choose allegiances nor did
they easily submit to European-style military regulations. In 1756,
for example, the Conde de Ega thought that the submission of the
sepoys to the regimento militar of Ericeira was the main cause behind
54
AHU, Cdice 399, Reforma e estabelicimento do Erario Regio do Estado da
ndia, . 10912.
55
AHU, ndia, Caixa 261, Real Ordem, 21 March 1756.
56
I/ANTT, Junta da Real Fazenda do Estado da ndia, Livro 37, Proviso, 22
December 1758.
91
the war with Savantvadi in 1754.57 The Savants, Ega argued, had
recently instituted reforms in their army, stressing the role of drill,
regular formations and heavy ries with bayonets. So far the Savants
army had mainly been Bhil light infantry. Those Bhils were skilled
in close combat with hand weapons and in ambushes in the impenetrable forests, which covered most of Savantvadi, and they were
armed with missile weapons like bows and at best with light buccaneer-ries. A form of warfare in which the Savants had traditionally excelled: the Savants and their Bhil retinue would engage
in lightening strikes against the Portuguese infantry after which they
disappeared again in the dense forests, where the cumbersome
Portuguese heavy infantry could not follow them.58
Yet while this Savant army was able to ambush the Portuguese
as happened with the expedition to Usgao, which was largely slaughtered by the Vadi force in the jungle with a loss of 70 sepoyssuch
a guerrilla force could not hold ground against the new sepoy Portuguese army.59 To defend themselves against the ever more aggressive Portuguese the Savants had to follow suit. This modernisation
of the Savant forces had led to a greater demand for European
trained sepoys in Savantvadi. The Savants had doubled their pay
for European mercenaries and doubled their quest for deserters
from Portuguese territory too. This had led to wide unrest among
the sepoys quartered in Ponda, who were badly underpaid relative
to what they would receive in the army of Savantvadi. This in turn
had tempted the Bhonsle to invade the territory of Ponda in 1754.
For the Savants were expecting aid from the disgruntled Portuguese
sepoys, who could still turn to pledging allegiance to the Savants if
they thought they were not properly treated by the Portuguese, without in any way considering this as mutiny.
After all, as we saw, some of their most ranking commanders had
deserted too. Not the least of whom was the fore-mentioned Ibrahim
57
AHU, Cdice 440, Lista das contas do V.Rey Conde de Ega mono de
1754, f. 4v.
58
For a close description of the jungle-warfare between Mughal troops and
their Portuguese auxiliaries with the Bhil guerilleiros of Khem Savant Bhonsle see in
particular the papeis do serviio of Joo da Silva de Vasconselhos in AHU, ndia,
Caixa 77, Document numbers 18 and 19.
59
vora, CXX/22, Jose Nunes de Agostinho to the Conde de Unho, 27
December 1746.
92
Khan, who was both a living legend and a kind of role model for
the Portuguese sepoys, and who had been serving the Estado for more
than thirty years. Yet he did switch allegiance to the Savants and
then to Mysore. Because, De Noronha argued,60 although he was the
most senior commander of the Estado he never got any further than
the position of captain, the reinois being promoted over his head.
Ibrahim Khan had also deserted in disgust because reinol senior commanders simply declined to listen to any advice by a black fellow.
To the injury of the humdrum military chicken-shit was thus added
racist insults for both the sepoys and the lascarins; the metropolitan
commanders normally referring to them as black bitches (cachorros),
Ega recorded. Ibrahim Khan was gladly received by Haidar Ali who
immediately promoted him to a senior command and gave him twice
his former salary.
Because of the subdued discontent among the sepoys the Portuguese
had reason to fear for more mutinies and entertained a network of
informers to spy upon their own troops. Dessai Dulba Naik, who
has always proven to be a faithful servant of the crown of Portugal
was for example to keep a close eye on the mounted company (the
Corpo volante) of the sepoys in Candal whobeing more mobile and
not quartered in xed barrackscould especially easily ee. He had
to immediately report to the headquarters any stirrings among them.
Their commanding ocers were to read the sepoys correspondence,
and sepoys quartered in barracks were strictly prohibited to have
any intercourse with people from the Deccan. Again, any letter sent
to the Deccan had to be read and censored by the lieutenants.61
60
61
93
62
I better leave the precise derivation of the word Chardo in the middle which
has been the topic of a lengthy debate. See P.P.S. Pissurlencar, Contribuio ao
estudo etnlogico da casta Indo Portuguese denominade chard luz de documentos
94
A good case of such upward vertical mobility from the xendi lists
is the sepoy sergeant Babhoji, whose father was Babhu Savant, a landless bonded labourer in the rice elds (lavrador begari das varzeas) and
by origin a shermen of Koli status. Babhoji Savant was still living
in the compound of his father, which we would imagine as a squatter settlement, a group of reed huts in a patch of common forest
land on the edge of the rice elds not claimed by any village, but
was assessed for xendi at 4 rupees: upper working class status. His
father was assessed at the very lowest rate for an unskilled bonded
labourer of 2 rupees. And that was as close to Goas under-class
as one could get. Even Christian beggars in Goa looked down upon
the Hindu lavradores das varzeas.63
Babhoji Savant simply needed the money, however meagre, and
above all he needed the food. The population of eighteenth century
Goa was certainly no stranger to famine. Because of the minor
scarcity (menor carestia) of 1739 and, again, the excessive price of
foodstu in 1758 the ration of soldiers was xed by the Conselho da
fazenda of Goa at three slices of bread (orcas de po) and one medida
of rice per soldier per day, which was by Goan standards a generous ration.64
Pay and food were not the only things enticing such lavradores
begaris das varzeas or small shermen to try to pursue a career in the
army. For one thing the army was one of the few relatively open
careers left in eighteenth-century Goa, which otherwise witnessed a
gradual process of social exclusion amongst the Indians themselves.
All this to the marked anger of their Portuguese masters. More
and more oces, and above all more and more land, were exclusively reserved for the Saraswath brahmans, who however were quite
averse to a career in the army. For another thing there was scope
for sexual gratication. Both Indian armies and Indian warbands
were habitually accompanied by bailardeiras whichif the word commonly referred to temple dancersin this case means little else but
95
96
70
97
71
98
very often state formation started with robbery, for such booty was
then reinvested by warlords such as Ganesha Bhai in buying riceelds in his patrimonial villages. This eectively entrenched such
Maratha or Savant warlords in the villages by becoming a co-sharer
within the local village economy, and the local decision making, of
the Konkan.
Furthermore, as the retinue moved to inhabit his land with him
such warbands tended to form permanent military colonies in their
new fatherland. The Portuguese had little choice but to follow suit
and allow incomes from the villages in various forms of main morte
(Ar. in'm) to the Cabos das cipayes. Take Bapoji Pant, who used to
be in charge of the soldiers assisting during the collection of the revenue (the mujamma'dr) in Ponda, and had helped in the campaign
against the Savants with a group of chosen men. If we do not
give this (in'm) to him he will surely retreat to the enemy the
Viceroy thought.73
Another case is that of Arba Naik, chief commander of the Savants,
who had switched sides to the Portuguese. Arba Naik requested, and
was granted, the right to establish a military settlement in the village of Anjapur in Ponda. The rice-elds in the village were to serve
as in'm land to feed his retinue. The retinue consisted of his brother
Vitoba Naik, sardaucar or chief commander of the regiment of soldiers tied to Arba Naiks house, of his subordinate commanders,
their family and of their military suite. Arba Naik said it consisted
of 15 houses with a staggering number of 224 persons in total
not counting women and children. The number in staggering for
normally houses in eighteenth century Goa generally held no more
than 4 to 5 persons. We should not so much imagine a house
here, then, but more a modern ward centred on the mansion
of the cabo das cipayes with the other soldiers of the company living
in the same ward, together with their extensive retinue of personal
servants, wives and children. Patronage ties overrode caste ties; for
though sardaucar Lakshmi Naik was obviously of upper-caste descent,
the other chiefs of the retinue, namely Sura Savant and Butto Savant,
where both of low-caste Koli descent.74
73
99
In Goa too newly attracted sepoys often lived in such military villages; in newly laid out or levelled palm-groves ( palmares). Works for
laying out such Hindu colonies in Goa were often paid by the wealthy
Hindu merchants, who then were paid the house rents. Such military colonies were somewhat comparable to those in the Conquistas
Novas and, like in the Conquistas Novas, they were partly laid out
as Grenzler settlement. They served both to populate and to protect
the borders between the Estado and Savantvadi. Such palmares were
either located on the land of former common forest ground of the
villages, or on land that was turned into swamps after the virtual
depopulation of Bardes and Salcete after 1684 and had reverted to
empty land, or emphatiotica crown land, status. Typical cases were the
palmares (formerly belonging to) Joo Bento and the palmar of the
Dominican Convent, both of which had a high number of sepoys
living there. Apart from the large number of sepoys there these were
very much settlements of low-caste Hindu shermen, shing in the
surrounding creeks. In both hamlets these comprised the mass of the
population. The sepoys there were part time soldiers, part time
shermen and especially part time boatmen. For particularly in
Bicholim shermen and boatmen often doubled as mariners on the
eet.75
However, when granting in'm land and establishing military colonies
such as Arba Naiks the Portuguese were obviously but following
older Indian usages. Most of this rent-free land was originally given
to men like Bapoji Pant by the Mughals or Marathas, so that he
will not retreat to the enemy too.
A Portuguese list of the cabos das cipayes who were allowed various forms of in'm land to feed their military retinue and who mostly
were concentrated in such separate military settlements thus constituted a veritable archaeology of the turbulent history of Ponda
over the last hundred years or so.76 Cabo Shaikh Murtuza and cabo
Shaikh Ismail with a military retinue of 79 men may, for example,
be conceived of as descendants of Mughal sergeants who had established military settlements in Ponda in the 1690s. Mahadaji Scindia,
75
vora, CXV/133, Lista de todos os gentios; Bibliotheca Pblica da Ajuda,
Lisbon, Cdice 51VII-28, Relao sumaria dos principais succesos de Goa com
a guerra de Marata, f. 14.
76
AHU, ndia, Caixa 316, Memoria da depeza que importara o pagamento
das tropas e outras na provincia de Ponda e Zambaulim.
100
Jagdish Patvardan and Mahadaji Malik dessay de Caranja were obviously Marathas who had pitched tents there somewhere in the 1730s;
they mustered 34 men between them. And nally the sovereignties of sardesai Rama Naik and of sardesai Pulamar Naik, with 24
men between them, were the remnants of far older Bhil chiefdoms,
who were intersected between the settled populations of Ponda,
where most forests were still the realm of the Bhils.
There was thus in Ponda and Zimbaulim a realm of private
taxation underlying the taxation of the realm and the military was
by and large paid through such private taxation. For example, in
1765 the total revenue of the two districts was valued by the Portuguese
at 193,476 xeraphin.77 This included the main agricultural revenue
(the jama' ) which rateas elsewhere in the Maratha dominionwas
thought to have been xed once and forever during Adilshahs reign
over Ponda in mutual agreement between the Adilshahs awldrs
and the sardesais of Ponda. In Savantvadi as much as in the kingdom of Sunda the villagers stressedwhen in 1766 queried in exhaustive detail by a Portuguese judge, Jos de Mendona Benvenido, in
a general devassa on the system of revenue in use before 1762the
revenue was only directly levied by ocials of the royal treasury
( por conte da fazenda real) in time of dire nancial necessity. In normal circumstances the ocials of Sunda and Savantvad had arrangements with the villages that they were to deliver a xed and customary
sum, part of which was to be levied by the sardesais.78
Since the customary jama was xed what gave the revenue its real
exibility were rst the dreaded cesses (called baj va bab in the Konkan)
imposed by the Marathas in the 1740s. These were supplementary
impositions on the mining or selling of iron anda major income
for the state in densely forested Zimbaulimimpositions in cash on
the peasants for permissions to cut wood in the forests. Second, and
more importantly, beyond that a long series of posts were subtracted
from the revenue. This basically meant that rice-elds were ctionally
supposed to be subjected to the state revenue but were in fact set
aside to cover the direct expenses of servants of the state. And above
77
AHU, ndia, Caixa 320, Mappa dos rendimentos das provinias de Ponda e
de Zimbaulim de hum anno de Julho de 1764 athe Junho 1765.
78
AHU, ndia, Caixa 266, O ouvidor Henriques Jose de Mendona Pereira
tirasse parecer, 4 October 1766.
101
all, that they were used to accommodate older elites (whose position
of power preceded the re-imposition of the Savants rule over Ponda
in 1702) within the Savant sovereignty. The crown of Savantvadi
was hollow. Savant sovereignty was pigeon-holed by that of a myriad small sovereignties, who were strictly speaking outside of the
Savants jurisdiction, be those sovereignties only over two or three
rice-elds.79
These consisted rst of the incomes of the Hindu priests serving
the temple at Nagua, covered through the incomes from the village
of Quelnithose incomes very likely already dating back to the
Vijayanagara period in the fourteenth century. It also consisted of
waqf-lands reserved for the q Ponda whose daily expenses were
paid from the incomes of two rice elds in two dierent villages in
Pondathose incomes probably dating back to either Adilshahi rule
or to the short Mughal interregnum.
But the main incomes subtracted from the revenue were those of
the sardesai Dulba Naik who for his support to the Portuguese had
been bestowed the revenue of the village of Vadri apart from various pieces of land in Zimbaulim, already in his possession since at
least 1700. And those of the sardesai of Ponda, Ragoji Savant, which
took a major chunk o the revenue at 18,206 xeraphins. This was
his due because the latter has a large number of desss under him,
who also serve under him in times of war.80
Yet being king of a mere three hamlets with maybe 2,000 inhabitants, where additionally Satroji Raja derived those claims on kingship not from the court of nearby Vad but from the very distant
court at Pune, is not really what we normally would associate with
a kingdom at all. This, I feel, is the problem of much recent literature emphasising the centrality of kingship in Indiain which power
always ows from the Rajafor what is the sense of speaking of a
kingdom which merely consists of three hamlets? Rather than
reecting any reality of power, owing from the Raja, much of the
language of absolute kingship and sovereignty (whether it involved
the pdshh in Delhi, or in this case the chatrapati at Satara) was in
79
N.B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown; Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Ann Arbor,
1993).
80
AHU, ndia, Caixa 86, Memoria dos dessays que servem o Estado e que he
indispensavel sua conservao (s.d., c. 1780).
102
the reality of the eighteenth century, I feel, a kind of lucky bag from
which successful military entrepreneurs could grab a few words and
claims to legitimise their claims on land they would ultimately have
seized by force. And in that respect most of the cabo das cipayes and
the sardesais perceived being a servant of His Catholic Majesty as
but little dierent from being a servant of the Peshwa or the Mughal.
Submitting to the Portuguese gave them yet another set of concepts
by which they could legitimise their claims on land.
103
83
Introduction
At the end of September 1739 the Dutch, with the help of their
allies the kings of Cochin and Kayamkulam, started a war against
Martanda Varma, king of Travancore.1 Both the Dutch and their
allies had their own reasons for this. The Dutch wanted to force the
Travancore king to keep to the contract that they had concluded
with his predecessor, the prince of Kottayam in 1691. The kings of
Kayamkulam and Cochin had dynastic and territorial reasons to
ght their neighbour.2 The Dutch thought that they could easily
defeat the Travancore army which mainly consisted of untrained,
poorly equipped soldiers, unfamiliar with European war tactics. This
in spite of the fact that the Dutch themselves had to cope with a
highly incompetent military command and with very unreliable allies.
The incompetence, for example, led to the building of several weakly
built forts. One of these forts was Colachel, a small harbour which
could, the Dutch thought, be easily provided with food and ammunition in case of a siege, which they thought highly improbable.3
With the arrival of the monsoon, the Dutch immediately withdrew
to their forts, both in the interior and on the coast of the Arabian
Sea. The forts in the interior, however, were captured by the enemy
so that nally the Dutch were forced to withdraw to Colachel which
was soon besieged from three sides. This fortress was mainly constructed of mud so that the walls could hardly hold the heavy Dutch
1
M. de Lannoy: The Kulasekhara Perumals of Travancore. History and State Formation
in Travancore from 1671 to 1758 (Leiden, 1997), p. 76.
2
Ibid., p. 15 and J.E. Heeres and F.W. Stapel (eds.), Corpus Diplomaticum NeerlandoIndicum; Verzameling van politieke contracten en verdere verdragen door de Nederlanders in het
Oosten gesloten, van privilegebrieven aan hen verleend etc. (The Hague, 19071955), Vol.
III, pp. 5638.
3
De Lannoy: Kulasekhara Perumals, p. 91.
106
artillery.4 To make things worse, the Dutch even failed to lock the
gate since the key had been sold by a corrupt VOC servant to the
French!
Crowded by refugees, Captain Hackert, the commander of the
Dutch forces, considered the situation desperate and decided, without orders of his superior Julius Valentijn Stein van Gollenesse, the
Commandeur of the Malabar Coast, to leave Colachel for Tuticorin.
Obviously this made the situation of the Dutch who stayed behind
even more desperate, especially after the Travancoreans succeeded
in blowing up the entire stock of gunpowder. The Colachel commander Rijtel requested help, and when Stein van Gollenesse discovered that Hackert had withdrawn from the fortress he ordered
him to return.5 For the Dutch at Colachel it was already too late.
Those who survived the siege capitulated and were forced to enter
into the service of the Travancore king. Reinicus Siersma,6 the successor of Stein van Gollenesse, described the loss of Colachel thus:
After the provisions were destroyed by re, the rest of the Colachel
garrison, partly by persuasion of the Travancore king, partly by hunger,
surrendered to the enemy. Now this king is served by approximately
300 or 400 Dutch soldiers which was mainly caused by Hackert who
had gone to Tuticorin instead of Cochin. Therefore we were not able
to send immediate reinforcements to Colachel.7
Idem, p. 92.
Nationaal Archief The Hague (NA), VOC 2543, Cochin Council to Batavia,
26 October 1741, . 40778.
6
Reinicus Siersma, born in Leeuwarden, died in Batavia, okt. 1757. In 1723 he
arrived as Sergeant in the Indies with the ship Castricum for the Chamber of
Amsterdam. On 12 Sept. 1723 Lieutenant-Captain of Malabar; 14 August 1733
Captain; 1 March 1740 Captain-Commander of Porto-Novo; 28 Dec. 1741 SergeantMajor of the Batavia castle; from 27 August 1742 until 1748 Commander of
Malabar; 3 Oct. 1752 to 29 Dec. 1754 Governor and Director on Banda; 16
Dec. 1755 Receiver-General and on 18 June 1756 Captain of the pennisten corps
(Wijnaendts van Resandt: De gezaghebbers, pp. 1901).
7
NA, VOC 2653, Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 6 January 1745,
. 856.
5
107
Schmitz mentions i.e. Javas Northeast Coast in 1741 ( J.P.G. Schmitz: Rechtshistorische bijdragen tot de kennis van het materieele en formeele strafrecht van toepassing op de
dienaren van de Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, voornamelijk betrekking hebbende op het delict
van desertie (Utrecht, 1938), p. 73).
9
J. van Kan: Uit de rechtsgeschiedenis der Campagnie, tweede bundel. Rechtsgeleerd bedrijf
in de buitencomptoiren (Bandung, 1935), p. 3.
10
Ibid., 1506. In the eighteenth century juridical administration in Cochin was
carried out with the help of a Rechtsboekje, a compendium of laws, ill composed by
an amateur for daily use in court.
11
NA, VOC 2581, Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 21 December
1741, . 603941.
108
12
NA, VOC 2581, Letter of captain Johannes Hackert to Batavia, 23 December
1741, . 7807.
13
NA, VOC 2561, Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 21 March 1742,
f. 144r.
14
NA, VOC 2581, Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 5 January 1742,
. 60656.
15
NA, VOC 2561, Letter of the Cochin Council to Batavia, 21 March 1742,
f. 143r.
109
110
20
NA, VOC 2577, Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 19 March 1742,
. 1345.
21
NA, VOC 2581, Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 27 March 1742,
. 62201.
22
NA, VOC 2581, Resolution of the Quilon Council of War, 1 April 1742,
. 62312.
23
NA, VOC 2577, Resolution of the Cochin Police Council, 14 May 1742,
. 23940.
111
24
Johannes Thedens (died 1748) Governor-General of the Netherlands Indies
from 1741 until 1743 (W. Wijnaendts van Resandt: De gezaghebbers der Oost-Indische
Compagnie op hare buiten-comptoiren in Azi (Amsterdam, 1944), p. 158).
25
This accusation or declaratoir clagtschrift has dissappeared from the archives
of the VOC. It is neither in the documents of the Chamber Amsterdam, nor in
that of Zeeland. It is however remarkable that the table of contents is still preserved (NA, VOC 2581, Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 30 April 1742, .
77839).
26
NA, VOC 2581, Letter of captain Hackert to Batavia, 30 April 1742, f.
7798.
112
The said Koller is a lickspite (likkebroer) who most of the time stays at
home. This happens especially in times of increasing work at the secretariat. Koller pretends then that he has pain on his breast and other
indenite complaints. Therefore the commander himself has to do the
major part of the administrative work. He is therefore not only commander but also his own secretary.
Adding about the Koller family: His wife and mother-in-law are
the most stupid and obstinate papal viragos on this coast.27
Hackert again requested that the Governor-General send him a
decent and capable person who was willing to defend him in court.
He remarked in this letter that if he was sentenced this would also
aect the complete Council of War over which he had presided during the Travancore war. In the meantime the compilation of the
accusation was continued. It already lled a quarter ream of paper.
Therefore Hackert wrote to Batavia that it seemed as if his whole
life was a sequence of enormous excesses which had to be written
down in the largest volumes.28
After Hackert was discharged from all his functions he could not
support himself anymore. A request for overdue payment was refused.
Moreover, Hackert thought that it was unfair that he had to pay
for copies of the accusations against him. Hackert described his judges
in the most unattering way, accusing them of improper conduct
and debaucheries:
After the well-known drunkard captain Jan Dirk van der Bruggen had
given under oath his false statement he came to me and shouted:
Now I hope I can take revenge! Van der Bruggen and all the others
received an extremely friendly treatment from the Commandeur (Stein
van Gollenesse). Yes, they were even promoted in rank and salary.29
113
van Gollenesse also knew very well that Hackert being at Batavia,
would not at all improve his own career prospects. At the same time,
though, without proper investigations Koller was not able to formulate a formal complaint against Hackert. On 28 May 1742 he
asked to be discharged from his function and soon thereafter he left
with his family for Colombo. Somewhat later, Stein van Gollenesse
was promoted Governor of Ceylon in July 1742.31 By then Hackert
was no longer a serious threat for the career of Stein van Gollenesse
and was sent to Batavia on 31 December 1742.32
31
114
Conclusion
The lack of professionalism of the Council of War was clearly shown
in the trials of Hackert and Leslorant. Hackert, the former President
of the Council, was tried by his former subordinates who saw this
process as a means to convey their frustrations caused by the lost
war against Travancore. Stein van Gollenesse had good reasons to
fear that his promotion of becoming the new Governor of Ceylon
would be endangered when Hackert was sent to Batavia. Therefore
Hackert could leave the Malabar Coast only after Stein van Gollenesse
36
115
1
Nationaal Archief, The Hague (NA), Collectie Aanwinsten 838: Amalia Constantia
Bisdom, n Falck, to her brother Jan Warnar Falck, Kasimbazar 1011755.
2
Ibid.
3
W. Wijnaendts van Resandt, De gezaghebbers der Oost-Indische Compagnie op hare
buiten-comptoiren in Azi (Amsterdam, 1944), p. 45.
4
Bisdoms case is exceptional, since only thirteen of the 115 members of the
Council of Bengal in the eighteenth century invested an average of only 2.3 times
their total earnings of their career within the VOC in English stocks. As such this
is a remarkable gure indeed. However, it is based on an odd 10% of the total
earnings of 115 members of the Council (F. Lequin, Het personeel van de Verenigde
Oost-Indische Compagnie in Azi in de achttiende eeuw, meer in het bijzonder in de vestiging
Bengalen (Leiden, 1982), I, p. 155; II, pp. 437, 546. Information on earnings in
appendix 10, pp. 54362).
118
a distance of approximately 575 km as the crow ies. The headoce was situated in Chinsura on the right bank of the river Hooghly,
from where it took on average 15 days to travel to Dhaka and 24
days to Patna. Ships arriving by the Bay of Bengal had to be piloted
upstream for two days through many banks and dangerous passages.
On the way they passed Fort William of the English East India
Company (EIC) at Calcutta, the Danish factory at Serampore and the
French factory at Chandernagore. It was a voyage with many opportunities for both courtesy and (private) business calls. An odd 27 km
south of Chinsura the Dutch owned the village of Barnagul, where
weavers worked in a safe-haven during troublesome times, and where
ladies of pleasure could be visited. The ships with deep draughts
would have to moor here, and, if the current was strong, all other
ships too. Finally, the church of Chinsura and the lofty ghats would
appear. Here the members of the Council supervised the unloading
of private goods brought by friends aboard. For most of the new
arrivals who would stay in Bengal, the voyage had ended. They
would add up to an average of 253 servants of the Company. Some
had to travel further on, may be to the lodge at Kasimbazar, circa
150 km upstream near the capital of Murshidabad, or still farther
to Patna, 480 km from Chinsura. These were small establishments
with respectively only 25 and 20 employees.5
For the VOC the Bengal factories were very important indeed.
As we know from the studies of Om Prakash, during the eighteenth
century the Dutch factories at Bengal, although losing some ground
in the Companys intra-Asian trade, became very prominent as suppliers of goods for the European market.6 Bengals growing exports
made the authorities in both Batavia and The Netherlands increasingly eager to keep a close watch on the region.
For another reason, too, the Batavia Council may have been
inclined to watch trade in Bengal attentively. It produced opium,
which was sold via Batavia on Java and gradually to other parts of
the Archipelago too. In 1677 the Company obtained a monopoly
on the sale of opium in Mataram, in 1678 in Palembang on Sumatra,
and nally in 1681 in Cheribon on Java. Although all opium had
to pass the market of Batavia, where it was sold by auction, it was
5
6
119
7
Om Prakash, Opium Monopoly in India and Indonesia in the Eighteenth
Century, Itinerario, 12 (1988), p. 83.
8
E.M. Jacobs, Koopman in Azi. De handel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
tijdens de 18 de eeuw (Zutphen, 2000), pp. 100,101,239.
9
Prakash, Opium Monopoly, p. 83; See also L.C.D. van Dijk, Bijvoegsels
tot de proeve eener geschiedenis van den handel en het verbruik van opium in
Nederlandsch Indi door den heer J.C. Baud, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
van Nederlandsch Indi, 2 (1854), pp. 2001.
10
Jacobs, Koopman in Azi, p. 102.
120
121
the Ostend Company once had had her fort.14 Obviously, Batavia
fostered plans for Bengal; it had certainly not written it o. At the
moment, the English did not envision basic change. As mentioned
already, their goal was to re-establish trade on the old footing. London
did not have great plans for Bengal either. It wanted the gains of
the AsiaEurope trade to come in as usual, not a change in mercantile policies.15 For the time being, the events on the Coromandel
Coast attracted strong attention. At the end of 1758 the Batavia
Council reported home that the French had taken Fort St. David
from the English. This showed that the English were still vulnerable. However, within the new relations of power the Dutch tried to
stay neutral. At the end of 1758, the Batavia Council criticised the
factors at Nagapattinam on the Coromandel Coast, as well as the
master of one of the Dutch ships, for giving salutation to the French.
Still more reproachable it thought the fact that pains had been taken
to provide the French with victuals. This would raise the suspicion
of the English. On the other hand, the French were a real nuisance:
they had seized the ship Haarlem and had kept the Oostkapelle at
Machilipatnam. When it was allowed to leave it had been wrecked
because of bad weather. However, real French power was limited
as their army was dispersed on its way to Tanjavur and their eet
had to seek refuge in Pondicherry after the battle of Nagapattinam.16
At home, the Gentlemen XVII were not at all content with the
cloth trade in Bengal. They had evidence that the English were better served than the Dutch and complained about the situation to
Batavia. Governor-General Mossel referred to a report saying that
the problems in Bengal resulted neither from fraud nor incapability
of the servants there. Instead, this report focused on the manner of
contracting with local intermediaries: whether with only one, or with
multiple merchants. It was held that many contractors needed more
money to live on than one. Facing competition they had to pay
higher prices to the weavers than in the case of one contractor.
Moreover, with many merchants there could be many bankruptcies
as well as a tendency of dragging out debts for long periods.17
122
123
Pondering over the assessment of Om Prakash and others, one wonders why the Batavia Council under Jacob Mossel embarked upon
such a prospectless adventure at all. Indeed, with the after-knowledge of the battle of Wandiwash in 1760, when the English defeated
the French, and that of Buxar in 1764, when the English defeated
21
124
Mir Qasim, the Nawab of Awadh and the Mughal emperor, the
Dutch expedition of 1759 looks rather bizarre. But before reassessing Batavias decision let us rst take a fresh look at the most important stages of the expedition proper: (1) its planning, (2) its preparation,
and (3) its execution.
The expedition
When writing on the establishment of a new fort at Banquibazar,
Adriaan Bisdom reported that it required a force of 2,000 European
and 6,000 Asian soldiers. However, on 15 January 1759, when discussing Governor-General Jacob Mossels proposal of a military expedition to the Indian subcontinent, the High Government decided to
send not more than 1,000 European and 1,000 Asian soldiers, with
an additional 1,000 European and Asian troops levied from Malabar.
It remained a moot question where exactly in India the eet of 6
to 8 ships (of 150 feet) would operate. The decision was left to the
heads of the establishments concerned. Curiously, it was also ordered
not to give oence either to the English or the French, or to any
Asian ruler. A general show of force was deemed sucient.27
The broad purpose of the expedition was narrowed down after
Batavia received a secret letter (21 November 1758) from Adriaan
Bisdom complaining about the English who hampered not only the
procurement of saltpetre, but of opium too. Clearly, they were trying to force the Dutch out of Bengal. However, there was also some
good news. The High Government had heard rumours that Mir
Jafars son, Miran, was fed up with the English and entertained plans
to revolt. So it quickly grasped the opportunity to remedy the ongoing humiliations in Bengal. On 6 February 1759 the Batavia Council
resolved to secretly authorise Bisdom to summon the eet to Bengal
if a revolt against Mir Jafar would break out. In that case assistance
could be oered to Miran in return for the payment of all costs and
the restoration of all former prerogatives to the Company.28
The Dutch must have been aware that assisting Miran would automatically lead to a confrontation with the English. In a secret instruc-
27
28
125
tion to Adriaan Bisdom the High Government said that now there
was an opportunity to revenge the insolent behaviour of the English
and to reinstall the Company as of old in its free and unhampered
trade. This would be worth the risk since the English were now
rather weak in Bengal and the population deplored their usurpation
of trade without paying tolls.29 On the one hand, knowing the fate
of the expedition and the rise to power of the English in Bengal, it
is inexplicable the High Government risked a war against them
merely on the basis of rumours of revolt. On the other hand, as
argued above, in the spring of 1759 the English had not yet consolidated their power all over the subcontinent. Stopping them was
still worth a try.
Most narratives of the expedition refer to and are based on the
detailed account given by Klerk de Reus who does not shun to
blame or praise the actors involved. Adriaan Bisdom and Justus Baak,
the master of the Visvliet, are judged to be responsible for the disaster, whereas George Lodewijk Vernet, the second-in-command
residing at Kasimbazar, is called very resolute.30 Patriotism deluded
Klerk de Reus to make these kind of judgements. From a more neutral point of view, we may observe that Vernet surely advocated the
show of force. He reported that Mir Jafar was fed up with the
English and had promised the Dutch freedom of inland trade against
a 2 % toll. According to Vernet, Mir Jafar had invited the assistance of the VOCs troops after Vernet had praised the power of
the Dutch Company. When this information reached Batavia in July
1759, the expedition was already on its way.31 Consequently, it did
not inuence the decision-making at Batavia.
Batavias secret instruction to Adriaan Bisdom arrived at Chinsura
on 17 June 1759. On the Dutch side, Bisdom and Vernet blamed
each other for not acting on it. On the English side, Robert Clive,
was fully informed of the Dutch plans by a spy. He pressed Mir
Jafar to consider the Dutch as his enemies and, on the basis of the
treaty of 1757, to request support from the EIC. With this in hand
Clive was free to act against the Dutch.32
29
30
31
32
Klerk
Klerk
Klerk
Klerk
de
de
de
de
Reus,
Reus,
Reus,
Reus,
De
De
De
De
expeditie
expeditie
expeditie
expeditie
(1889),
(1890),
(1889),
(1890),
pp. 21168.
pp. 3540.
p. 2108.
pp. 315.
126
On June 16th the Dutch eet left the roads of Batavia. All of
them were ordinary merchant ships that were about to return to the
Netherlands, two via Coromandel, and four via Bengal. One small
yacht would go along for reconnoitring. The number of soldiers was
small, compared to what had been planned: neither the 2,000
European and 6,000 Asian soldiers required by Bisdom, nor the
1,000 European and 1,000 Asian ones deemed necessary by the
Batavia Council, but only 331 European and 565 Asian troops were
on board. The commander of the armed forces was Jean Baptiste
Roussel, who stood under the political command of the mercantile
authorities in Bengal.33 On the roads of Banten the eet met the
ships arriving from Holland. From these 200 soldiers were taken
aboard but, in Roussels opinion, they were totally untrained, having
no uniforms, more peasants than soldiers. Despite the instruction to
call on Ceylon rst, on August 8th the eet reached Nagapattinam
on the Coromandel Coast. Here Roussel disembarked to give his
soldiers some necessary training. Leaving again on September 13th,
the ships anchored at Falta on the river Hooghly south of Calcutta
on October 12th.34
To understand the failure of the expedition it is not necessary to
retell the whole story. It suces to discuss the points to which the
catastrophe has been attributed. First of all, the lonely early arrival
of the Visvliet, one of the otillas ships. At the very beginning of
the expedition, its master, Justus Baak, had already steered away
from the eet and arrived at the mouth of the Hooghly as early as
August 21st, as he alleged, forced by heavy storm. Not amused,
Roussel charged him of speeding up to Bengal to be the rst to sell
his private goods there. Although Clive already had strong suspicion
of a Dutch intervention, the arrival of the Visvliet, with troops aboard,
conrmed it. Immediately he put strong guards in the Mughal fort
of Makwa Tanna as well as in the opposite stronghold of Charnoe,
ve miles south of Calcutta.35 A surprise attack was now impossible.
After the arrival of the ships at Falta on October 12th, lengthy
discussions dragged on in letters between Bisdom and Vernet at
Chinsura, who now held the supreme command, and Roussel in the
33
34
35
127
36
128
to 25th they marched day and night mostly along roads and through
elds that were ooded to their knees. Many times Chinsura was
said to be near, even though Roussel admits in his report that he
distrusted his guides and had no idea where he was. On 25 November,
totally exhausted, the Dutch met the Englishcounting 320 European
and 800 sepoy infantry, and 50 European and 100 Asian cavalry
at Bedara, near Chandernagore, eight miles from Chinsura. Again,
the Dutch were totally defeated: 120 Europeans and 200 Asians were
killed. Roussel and fourteen ocers, 320 Europeans and 200 Asians
were captured. Of all Dutch soldiers only fourteen reached Chinsura
safely.37
Now it became clear who pulled the strings in Bengal. The Dutch
could only but succumb to the demands of the English. It was agreed
that the VOC would give an indemnity for all damages caused by
the Dutch ships, and that ships, ammunition and other properties
would be returned to both sides. However, the English demanded
that the Dutch would enter a treaty with the Nawab rst. Herein,
the VOC had to make many concessions. The Company promised
to take back all troops and to limit the European military presence
within the factories in Bengal, Patna and Balasore to 125. In future,
the VOC promised it would trade peacefully. After this treaty had
been agreed on 5 December 1759, the English and Dutch ratied
their agreement, under the condition of nal approval by their superiors, on 8 December.38
That the conditions for the Dutch had changed drastically, became
clear soon, when the Nawab, on the allegation that the Dutch were
conspiring with a rebellious Mughal prince who threatened Bengal,
forced them to pull down the outer-bulwarks of the fort at Chinsura,
and to pay an indemnity of 50,000 rupees. Meanwhile, the threats
from the Nawab towards the Dutch and the insults from the English
went on. Finally, on 23 August 1760, a new treaty was drawn up
between the Dutch and the Nawab, which was guaranteed by the
English. To make sure that the Dutch would never again militarily
intervene, it was agreed that they were not allowed to have more
than one ship upstream from Mayapur along the river Hooghly to
37
129
Reappraisal
Within the Batavia Council the Governor-General had to plan and
manage the policy of the VOC. This Jacob Mossel did. As Bengal
was very important for the AsiaEurope trade and as the battle of
Plassey had given the English a privileged position there, he submitted a project for military action involving the VOCs Indian factories. The purpose was to show that not only the English and the
French, but also the Dutch were able to deploy a war-eet. In a
secret instruction to Bisdom the Batavia Council cleared the way for
an expedition to Bengal. The nal decision was left to him. The
project was not as bizarre as it looks at rst sight. The English were
not yet rmly established in Bengal and, for that matter, certainly
not in India. Robert Clive showed what troops drilled in a European
way were capable of. Fort William had survived as the centre of
English power in Bengal, so for the Dutch it was worthwhile to try
39
40
Klerk de Reus, De expeditie (1890), pp. 25561; Stapel, Corpus, 6, pp. 2059.
Klerk de Reus, De expeditie (1890), pp. 26271.
130
131
41
In 1776 and 1777 his son Jacob Mossel, alderman at Rotterdam, and his sonsin-law Pieter Cornelis Hasselaar and Gerard Maximiliaan Taets van Amerongen
received dividends from the Society. In 1786 the Company still owed f 47,402 to
the heirs of Jacob Mossel. Then they obtained 47 bonds at f 1,000 on the Company,
guaranteed by the States-General (NA, Collectie Mossel , Film 3897, Nrs. 10,14).
134
M.J. Seth, Armenians in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present DayA Work
of Original Research (Calcutta, 1937), p. 385.
135
4
Both Yerevan and Julfa are names of places in Armenia. Following the forced
evacuation of the country and settlement of Armenians in Persia at the behest of
Shah Abbas the Great, Armenians renamed the suburb of Isfahan New Julfa.
5
In an application written to the English in 1763 Petrus mentioned that he had
been a resident of Calcutta for fourteen to fteen years ( James Long, Selections from
the Unpublished Records of Government for the years 1748 to 1767 inclusive Relating Mainly
to the Social Condition of Bengal, no. 252. (Calcutta, 1869)).
6
Calcutta High Court, Invoice of the estate of the late Khoja Petrus, Calcutta,
16 February 1789, Old Will no. 2623, Original Side.
7
Nationaal Archief The Hague (NA), VOC 3005, Resolutions of the Council
at Hooghly, 12 January 1761, . 573v.74.
8
See e.g. R.K. Ray, Polashir Shorojontro o Sekaler Somaj [The Conspiracy of Plassey
and Contemporary Society] (Calcutta, 1998), passim and S. Chaudhury, The Prelude
to Empire: Plassey Revolution of 1757 (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 94, 97, 107.
9
Seth, Armenians in India, pp. 36070 and passim.
10
Saiyid Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai, Seir ul Muthaqherin, 2 vols (Lahore,
1975). All the references in this article are from volume 2, p. 503 (footnote).
11
Tapanmohan Chattopadhyay, Palasir par Buxar (Calcutta: 1st Navana ed., 1983),
p. 132.
12
Seth, Armenians in India, p. 384.
136
Armenian general of unassailable integrity.13 As it is widely acknowledged that it was Khoja Gregory, renamed Gurgin Khan by Mir
Qasim, who for the rst time re-modelled the Nawabs army after
the European fashion, it will not be out of place at this point to
take into account the performances of the general in this context.
Military reforms stood high on the agenda of Mir Qasim who was
bent on setting up his independent authority and bringing the English
to book. He knew that it was due to two mistakes of Mir Jafar that
the English had become so oppressive: he had agreed to accept military assistance of the British and pay the tam (tax imposts) every
month and had promised to pay as bribe more than the treasury
could aord.14 As soon as he had sorted out the nancial crisis, Mir
Qasim, who was studious to procure men of military talents, paid
attention to the restructuring of his army. The appointment of Gurgin
Khan as the principal chief of his troops and war minister was a
measure noted by contemporaries with jealousy and surprise.
One of the best known contemporary sources for the reconstruction
of the history of the period concerned is Seir Muthaqherin (P. Siyar alMut"irn) by Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai.15 Ghulam Husain
belonged to a noble familya family more inuential and powerful
than that of Mir Qasim. The rise of Armenians like Gurgin Khan
to prominence must have threatened the interests of families like his
own.16 Moreover, it is likely that Husain bore a personal grudge
against Gurgin. Mir Qasim expressed his intention to take away
Ghulam Husains jgr at Monghyr, together with the fortress and
confer it on Gurgin Khan.17 Consequently, Ghulam did not waste
13
Such was at least the belief of Jean Baptiste Joseph Gentil, who served the
French East India Company in India under Dupleix and de Lally. After the capitulation of Chandernagore to the English, he entered the service of Mir Qasim. As
a condant of Gurgin Khan, he accompanied the Armenian general in the Nawabs
camp (C.E.A.W. Oldham, The Murder of Gurgin Khan, Bengal Past and Present,
29 (1925), pp. 21923).
14
A.K. Maitreya, Mir Qasim (Calcutta, 1957), p. 74.
15
The bias of Ghulam Husain against the Armenian Commander-in-Chief of
Mir Qasim is clearly evident in the way he talks about Gurgin Khan (Seir, Vol. 2,
pp. 389, 422, 447, 455, 5001).
16
Similar bias is noticed in the writing of Maharaja Kalyan Singh who described
Gurgin as the evil genius of Meer Kasim. See Khan Bahadur Sarfaraz Husain
Khan, Translation of Maharaja Kalyan Singhs Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh, The Journal
of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 6,1 1920, p. 127.
17
In exchange, Mir Qasim had oered Ghulam Husain a better estate. But
according to the Seir, the exchange never took place (Seir, Vol. 2, p. 425).
137
Chattopadhyay maintains that Mir Qasim had already taken possession of the estate
of Ghulam Husain before he talked to the latter about it (Chattopadhyay, Palasir
par Buxar, pp. 1301). When governor Vansittart called upon Mir Qasim at Monghyr,
he stayed in a building raised by Gurgin on the Pirpahar hills of Sitakund (Seir,
Vol. 2, p. 443).
18
The sudden rise of Gurgin Khan did not escape the attention of the director
of the Dutch East India Company in Bengal: Armenians play a big role in Bengal
since the revolution of 1757. They have not only assisted the English in brewing
treason against Sirajuddaula as a result of which Bengal has been enslaved to the
English . . . . but also have been able to (I do not know how) acquire a fame among
the Muslims as good soldiers. Consequently, Mir Qasim has chosen Choja Gregory,
brother of the famous Choja Petrus, the chief commander of his army. (NA, Hoge
Regering Batavia, 246, Second memoir of Louis Taillefert concerning Bengal, 17
November 1763, f. 285).
19
Seir, Vol. 2, p. 422 fn. 224. Raymond was a French Creole who later adopted
Islam and was called Haji Mustafa. According to him Gurgin was even more knowledgeable than Taqi Khan.
20
See for instance A. Broome, History of the Rise and Progress of the Bengal Army, 2
vols (Calcutta and London, 18501), Vol. 1, p. 352. The account of the re-organisation of Mir Qasims army here is based largely on Broome.
21
Seir, Vol. 2, p. 421 fn. 222.
138
The shot and the shell were partly imported and partly manufactured in the country. When manufactured in the country, the shells
were either cast of soft metal or made of stone. The artillery was
mounted in the English manner and was served by 200 Europeans.
The carriages were of indigenous make, furnished with elevating
screws and quite equal to their originals. Magazines and manufactories were founded at dierent parts of the country. Ordinance, as
well as iron guns made in Europe, were, however, readily available
as they formed a part of the regular imports made by private European
traders.22 Moreover, a large part of the European munitions of
the army seems to have been collected by Gurgin Khan himself
through the agency of his brother Khoja Petrus who was thick and
thin with the English.
The cavalry was formed into regiments and rusallahs (P. rislas).
The ranks were chiey lled by Afghans, Rohillas and other races
from the north and the commanders were almost exclusively Muslim.
The total strength of this force was limited to about 16,000 but the
increased eciency was supposed to have compensated for the reduction in numbers. The infantry was also formed to a great extent
upon the model of English siph battalions. It was composed of two
classes: najbs and telingas. While the former retained the indigenous
dress and were armed with match-locks, the uniform and the equipment of the latter were exactly copied from the European models.
The muskets with which they were armed were all made in the
country.
It should be remembered that Gurgin Khan was not the only
Armenian in Mir Qasims army. He had gathered about one hundred
Armenians with a few of them appointed as generals, colonels and
captains.23 Among them Margar Johannes Khalantharnoted for
his bravery and capability during the capture of Patnaand Arathoon
Margar held important ranks in the army.24 Margar was supposed
to have learnt the techniques of war in Europe as he had served in
Holland.25 He had formed a special troop with soldiers from all the
22
Arms and ammunition imported by European ships to Asia were very much
in demand in countries around the Indian Ocean.
23
T. Khojamall, A Short History of India, source: Seth, Armenians in India, pp. 4134.
24
Broome, History of the Rise and Progress, Vol. 1, p. 352; and Seth, Armenians in
India, p. 413.
25
Seir, Vol. 2, p. 474 fn. 250.
139
Before entering into the question if such an assertion has any historical basis, it would be interesting to see how Chattopadhyay introduces the character of Gurgin Khan to the reader in his novel
Chandrasekhar:
Among all the statesmen in Bengal at that time, Gurgan Khan was
one of the best and most superior. He was an Armenian from Isfahan.
It is said that he was a cloth merchant in his early life. But he was
26
It is however the fascinating life of the nautch girl who became known as
Begam Samru after her marriage to Reinhardt that has inspired historians. See
Bandyopadhyay Brajendranath, Begam Samru (Calcutta, 1925); John Lall, Begam Samru:
Fading Portrait in a Gilded Frame (New Delhi, 1997).
27
Seth, Armenians in India, p. 385.
140
a man of extra ordinary quality and a genius. Soon after he was
employed by the Nawab, he became the Commander-in-Chief of the
army. On getting that position, he created a new artillery. The gunners were trained and dressed after the European method. The cannons and guns that were manufactured under his instruction were
better than those made in Europe. In every respect his artillery was
equivalent to the artillery of the English. Mir Qasim had hoped that
he would be able to defeat the English with the help of Gurgan Khan.
His authority became so extensive that Mir Qasim did not take any
step without consulting Gurgan Khan. Consequently, Gurgan Khan
became a small Nawab. This annoyed the Muslim bureaucrats.28
28
Bankim Rachanabali [Collected Works of Bankim] (Calcutta, Beng. Era 1372
(1965), Vol. 1, p. 414 (my translation). Chandrasekhar is a romantic novel set against
the background of the reign of Mir Qasim. It is not the intention to evaluate
Chattopadhyays novels here: our interest is in the character of Gurgin as portrayed
by Chattopadhyay. For an excellent literay and sociological appreciation of Chattopadhyays work, see S. Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Chattopadhyaychandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi, 1995).
141
more treasures. What is the use of counting the waves sitting on the
shore? Well, I used to sell cloth by the yard and now the whole of
Bharatbarsha is restless out of fear for me. I am the sovereign of Bengal.
Am I really the sovereign of Bengal? Who is in fact the sovereign?
The English merchants are the sovereigns of BengalMir Qasim is
their servantI am the servant of the servant of the sovereigna
pretty high position indeed! Why can I not be the sovereign of Bengal?
Who is able to face my cannons? The English? I wish I could get
them once! But I cannot be the sovereign of the country unless the
English are driven out. I would like to be the lord of BengalI do
not care for Mir Qasim. The day I shall think so, I shall dethrone
him. He was only a ladder to climb up; now that I am on the rooftop, I can discard him. The bloody English are the only thorn in the
esh. They want to bring me under their control just as I want to
control them. They cannot be controlled, so I shall drive them away.
Let Mir Qasim remain on the throne now; with his help I shall erase
the English from the map of Bengal. That is why I am taking the initiative to begin the war. Afterwards I shall bid farewell to Mir Qasim.29
Again, contemporaries noted that it was Mir Qasim who was impatient and wanted to launch a war at every single provocation on the
part of the English. Gurgin, they noted, was intelligent and a man
of sound sense exerting all his inuence to restrain the Nawabs
indignation against the provocations of the English and like a true
loyalist calming down the Nawab and inducing him to postpone hostilities till the time was ripe.30 But in Chattopadhyays imagination,
Gurgin himself is aspiring for the throne and as such he cannot wait
for the events to take their turn and has to incite the war. That
message is given once again through the conversation between Gurgin
Khan and his sister Dalani Begum who visits him secretly at night:31
29
142
D: I have come here to ask you something is it true that a war
against the English is on the cards?
G: Dont you hear anything about it in the fort itself?
D: Yes, I do; the rumour in the fort has it that a war against the
English is imminent, and you have instigated this war. Why?
G: Let it be; why should you and I bother if there is a war against
the English? If it so happens, let it be.
D: Do you think you can win?
G: That is very much likely.
D: Whosoever has won against the English so far?
G: How many Gurgan Khans have the English fought?
D: Siraj-ud-daula thought that too. . . . it appears to me that there is
no way we can win against the English in this war. This war will
cause our ruin. Therefore I have come to you with a requestplease do not incite this war!. . . . .
Gurgan Khan was surprised. He said why are you crying? Even
if Mir Qasim is dethroned, I shall take you back to our homeland.32
32
143
34
144
145
Plassey, the inland trade of Bengal had emerged for the army ocers
and the Company servants in Bengal as the most promising eld for
making a quick fortune.39 The freedom from the customs duties was
extended in an illegitimate and uncontrolled manner to the private
inland trade of the English in Bengal and Bihar. By further extension, gumshtas of the English and other indigenous traders willing to
evade the duties could buy the dastaks, or simply hoist the Companys
ag on passing a transit duty post (chauk ).
While the Nawab was deprived of his revenues and the trade of
the country was totally disorganised, any attempt on behalf of the
Nawab to resist the most glaring frauds met violent protest from the
members of the Council in Calcutta. As more and more Englishmen
penetrated the market towns and villages of Bengal dealing in rice,
paddy, salt, bamboo, straw, tobacco, betel-nut, copper, lack, sticklack, dammar, dried sh and all sorts of sundry goods they had
never traded before, they not only forced the peasants to buy their
goods at a rate much above the market price, but also exacted large
sums for presents. The Nawabs ocials from dierent districts
informed him about their helplessness against the Company ocials,
private English merchants and their gumshtas. While they systematically outed the authority of Mir Qasim, the latter was also concerned as these activities deprived the poor of their subsistence.40
Repeated intimations to the Governor in Council on behalf of
Mir Qasim and his ocials were in vain. The Nawab had already
acceded the English the right to coin sikka rupees in his mints. As
a last resort, the infuriated Mir Qasim decided to abolish transit
duties altogether on all trade for two years. Indeed, the Council of
Fort William was divided in its opinion about Mir Qasim. While
Vansittart and Warren Hastings tried their best to work out an
understanding with the Nawab, the arrogance and the hostility of
the rest gained ground. The trade of the English private merchants
was to get a preferential treatment in comparison with and at the
39
P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: the British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century
(Oxford, 1976), passim.
40
The activity of the private European and his gumshta in the interior of Bengal
was brought to the notice of the Nawab by his ocials. In his correspondence with
the English governor in Calcutta, Mir Qasim sent copies of those letters, quoted
extensively in Henry Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal 17601764
(Calcutta, 1976), pp. 49, 14849, 19192, 19394, 256, 358, 431.
146
41
While the Narrative abounds in examples of such arrogance, quoting one of
them here will not be out of place. Councillor Johnstone, for instance, thought that
Mir Qasim was anxious to to ruin our [English] trade, superiority and inuence
through the country, by reducing us on a footing with all other European or foreign
traders, and even with the very Bengal inhabitants (Vansittart, Narrative, p. 370).
42
Rajat Kanta Ray, Colonial Penetration and the Initial Resistance: the Mughal
Ruling Class, the English East India Company and the Struggle for Bengal 17561800,
The Indian Historical Review, 12, 12 (19851986), pp. 1105.
43
Vansittart, Narrative, pp. 36970.
147
44
Khoja Anton, a resident of Mulky, had been born in Delhi (Vansittart, Narrative,
pp 1412).
45
Vansittart, Narrative, pp. 1436.
46
NA, VOC 3074, Letter from the Director and Council at Hooghly to the
Governor-General and Council in Batavia, 10 December 1763, . 7278.
148
army of Nepal, Gurgin lost many of his men but was able to repulse
the enemy in the end. His army managed to reach the summit of
the ascent where they halted at the nightfall. But when the troops
were resting, the Nepalese launched a surprise attack with stones,
arrows and musket-balls creating a great havoc that forced the Mughal
troops to descend back to the bottom of the pass. According to
Ghulam Husain, Gurgin was dumbfounded at this disgrace and was
so deeply embarrassed that he went back to the camp of the Nawab
only after he was persuaded by Ali Ibrahim Khan, dispatched by
the Nawab to fetch the chief of his army. This expedition to Nepal
was perhaps an indication of what could be expected from the army
of Mir Qasim at the end of the day.
The army of the Nawab was numerically superior to that of the
English.47 Yet, when it came to the actual encounters between the
armies of Mir Qasim and the English during 176364, the Mughal
army could not stand in the face of the enemy. It is not dicult,
as we have seen above, to blame Gurgin, the commander-in-chief
of Mir Qasims army. It is remarkable that neither Mir Qasim nor
Gurgin was physically present to command the troops at the places
where the battles were being fought. After Patna was seized by Ellis,
the chief of the English factory at that place, Gurgin sent a force
under the command of Margar for the assistance of Mir Mahdi
Khan, the governor of Patna. Together with Mir Nasser, who commanded the rocket-men and commanders Jafar Khan and Alam
Khan, Margar, at the head of six regiments of disciplined Telingas
and eight cannons, pursued the English and re-captured Patna.48 All
the Englishmen of the lodge at Patna including Ellis, Hay and
Lushington were taken captive to Monghyr. Afterwards, the detachment that Mir Qasim sent to Murshibadad with orders to advance
towards Katwa, was led by commanders Jafar Khan, Alam Khan
and Mir Haibat al-Lah while general Taqi Khan, the faujdr of
Birbhum was to join them at the head of his own troops.49
47
Following the estimate given by Raymond, Mir Qasim had about 16,000 cavalry and 25,000 infantry one half of which were trained in the English manner
(Seir, Vol. 2, p. 425 fn. 227).
48
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 4735; E. Cotton, The Memoirs of Gentil, Proceedings of the
Indian Historical Records Commission (Rangoon, 1928), p. 10.
49
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 4767.
149
Jealous of Taqi Khan, Saiyid Muhammad Khan, the deputy governor of Murshidabad, who was expected to supply military provisions to the commanders, was not only slow and reluctant in complying
with his duty but made sure at the same time that the three commanders asserted their independence of the general. Consequently,
when those commanders requested Taqi Khan for some of his musketeers, he sent them ve hundred musketeers under one Feramorz,
a slave ocer under his command. According to Ghulam Husain,
Taqi Khan, liberal and generous in nature, was an extremely talented general who treated men under his command as fellow companions. But later, when Taqi Khan himself decided to oppose the
march of the English at Katwa, he did not ask the refractory commanders to follow him, and they also remained motionless in their
encampment, as mere spectators of a show. Thus the battle of
Katwa, which for a brief moment became critical for the English,
was fought by the troops of Taqi Khan alone, who lost his life in
the battleeld.50
For the next encounter, Mir Qasim, disheartened at the death of
general Taqi Khan, sent orders to Haibat al-Lah to make a stand
at the plains of Suti while he sent another detachment comprising
six to seven thousand horses under the command of Asad al-Lah
Khan, the faujdr of Narhat-Simai, and seven or eight regiments of
Telingas and sixteen cannons under the charge of Margar and
Sumroo. They were joined by Mir Nasser at the head of a body of
rocket-men and the forces of Sher Ali Khan, the governor of Purnia.
This time Mir Qasim warned the commanders against dissension
and jealousy and ordered them to ght in concert. During the time
of the engagement Margar and Sumroo were in the middle. Asad
al-Lah, at the head of a large body of cavalry and infantry, was on
their right while Sher Ali Khan took position on the left. The English
seemed to gain a superiority over the troops of Margar and Sumroo
at the very start. While both the armies were advancing, Mir Badr
al-Din, one of Asad al-Lahs men, parted company with the main
body and advanced further at the head of eighty horse. He was
assisted by the rocket-men under Mir Nasser and together they
engaged the English with such a force that a battalion of the English
Telingas was forced to retreat. But Mir Badr al-Din lost most of his
50
150
men in this charge, and intimidated by the loss suered by Mir Badr
al-Din and his troops, neither Asad al-Lah nor any of his men made
a single move. By this time, Margar and Sumroo were seen to be
retreating. The English had been nearly cornered at Suti but the
failure of Asad al-Lah Khan to make a timely charge gave the enemy
the chance to regroup, disengage their artillery and present a regular front with fresh courage and reinforcement that brought them
victory.51
It was only after this debacle that Mir Qasim himself went to
Champanagar to review his troops destined for the defence of
Udhuanala. By that time Kamgar Khan, the zamndr of NarhatSimai, had joined the camp of Mir Qasim through the mediation
of Ali Ibrahim Khan. When Gurgin Khan proposed that Kamgar
should join the troops at Udhuanala, Kamgar, a military talent,
replied that there were enough troops at that place already and what
was required was a commander-in-chief who would be able to lead
all the troops to ght in concert. His next remark insinuated that
Gurgin lacked military knowledge and experience. The latter interpreted this as Kamgars unwillingness to proceed to Udhuanala as
he was waiting for an opportunity to turn against the Nawab. When
Mir Qasim approached Ali Ibrahim on this issue, the latter emphasized the need of the presence of a commander-in-chief at Udhuanala
and maintained that the only suitable person to proceed to that place
at that moment was Gurgin himself. Mir Qasim replied that he had
no objections to it but when he mentioned it to Gurgin, the latter
pointed out that he did not want to leave Mir Qasim at a time of
utter confusion.
There was, however, no less confusion among the large number
of troops and artillery at Udhuanala. The artillery was commanded
by Arathoon, Margar and Sumroo while the other troops were commanded by Asad al-Lah Khan, Muhammad Naqi Khan, Alam Khan,
Jafar Khan, Haibat al-Lah, Mir Himmat Ali, the newcomer Mirza
Najaf Khan and others. All the commanders were at the head of
their respective corps and according to Ghulam Husain, they were so
condent about the natural strength of the entrenchment at Udhuanala,
that they neglected their duty. Being tipped o by an English soldier who had earlier deserted the English camp for service with Mir
51
151
Qasim and was now willing to go back to the former, the English
were able to nd a ford through the lake and morass leading to the
otherwise impregnable Mughal camp. When the entire entrenchment
was fast asleep, the English waded through the marsh and took the
Mughal camp by surprise.52
A cursory look at the way the battles were fought is enough to
suggest the lack of overall co-ordination among the troops in the
Mughal camp. We have noted above that neither Mir Qasim nor
Gurgin Khan were present on the scene of warfare. Why Gurgin,
in spite of being the supreme commander of the army, was not willing to supervise the troops at the most crucial moments, can only
be guessed. While the argument he put forwardthat he could not
leave Mir Qasim unattended at a time when confusion, perdy and
treason reignedcannot be totally ignored,53 it cannot be denied
that, notwithstanding the fact that Gurgin was a natural military talent, he lacked experience. That was evident during the expedition
to Nepal. If we accept, as all the authorities except for Ghulam
Husain have maintained, that Gurgin was a military genius, then he
must have realised after the disaster in Nepal that his army was not
yet ready to face the English army. Did Gurgin want to save himself from repeatedly facing similar embarrassments? If that was indeed
the case, then it would explain why Gurgin asked Mir Qasim to
have patience in the face of the insolent and aggressive attitude of
the English. Mir Qasim himself also did not lead the troops ghting
under dierent commanders.54
52
152
153
ocials of Mir Qasim, who, according to Ray collectively represented the hostility of the Mughal imperial class to the English by
ghting the attempts of the English to monopolize the trade of the
country, the Mughal warriors ghting for Mir Qasim failed to present a united front.58
58
154
60
The account of Gurgins murder left by Gentil is essentially similar. Gentil,
however, noted that there was only one Mughal trooper who attacked Gurgin. He
threatened to massacre all the Armenians attached to Gurgins camp too. The
Armenians were able to forestall the plan of the Mughal trooper to re a piece of
cannon on the tent. The rumour had it that the English had attacked Gurgins
camp. When Gentil informed him of the death of Gurgin, Mir Qasim seems to
have looked aected, though he said kaire salla or all goes well, which gave
Gentil the impression that Mir Qasim had Gurgin murdered (Oldham, The murder of Gurgin Khan). David Lorenzen has recently found new documents relating to the death of Gurgin Khan left by the Capuchin fathers based at Betia. The
account of Gurgins death presented in these documents is similar to the one left
by Gentil. I am grateful to Gautam Bhadra for giving me this information though
it has not been possible for me to see Lorenzens paper while preparing this essay.
61
Vansittart, Narrative, p. 481.
62
Vansittart, Narrative, pp. 5034, 507. A few members of the council of Fort
William were of opinion that Petrus was Mir Qasims spy in Calcutta (Long, Selections,
no. 647, p. 314).
63
This letter to Major Adams has been quoted in Seth, Armenians in India, pp.
3412.
155
had sent proposals to Gurgin to leave the Nawabs camp and save
the life of his brother, a prisoner in the English camp. Gurgin declined
this request saying that he would not abandon Mir Qasim whom
he had pledged his faith.64 Mir Qasim was informed by his spies
that Gurgin was intriguing with the English. Moreover, it seems
Gurgin had advised Mir Qasim to come to an understanding with
Mir Jafar.65 Desperate as the Nawab was, he took the extreme measure he had taken, and would later take, against so many people
under his charge, to get rid of his trusted minister too.
This account of Mir Qasim getting rid of Gurgin Khan ts in
very well with the incidents preceding and following the death of
the commander-in-chief and the character of the Nawab as noted
by contemporaries and later historians. By nature weak and extremely
suspicious, Mir Qasim was known for his cruelty. All the members
of the nobility imprisoned in the fort of Monghyr were brutally murdered by his order.66 Soon after the death of Gurgin Khan, the Seth
brothers were drowned from a tower of the castle of Monghyr.
Following the fall of the fort of Monghyr to the English, all the
English prisoners arrested in Patna, about fty in number, were
heinously executed by Sumroo.67 Thus the murder of Gurgin was
only one in a chain of atrocious acts sanctioned by Mir Qasim.
There is, however, one source that throws new light on the assassination of Gurgin Khan. Although reduced in importance after the
unsuccesful bid to curb the English at Bedara (1759), the Dutch at
Chinsura noted with interest the political and economic aggression
of the English in the post-Plassey period. The important role played
by the Armenians in the politics of Bengal in this period did not
escape the attention of Louis Taillefert, the Director of the Dutch.
While preparing his nal report in 1763, Taillefert noted that initially Mir Qasim had been falsely charged with the murder of Khoja
Gregory. Later it was conrmed that in order to woo the English,
the Seth brothers Mahatab Rai and Swarupchand, grandsons of
64
Oldham, The murder of Gurgin Khan, p. 222. This has been corroborated
by Chattopadhyay (Palasir par Buxar, pp. 1745).
65
Chattopadhyay, Palasir par Buxar, p. 175.
66
Ram Narayan, the ex n"ib-nim of Patna, Raj Ballabh and his sons, Ray
Rayan Umedh Rai and his son, the zamndrs of Tikary, Raja Fateh Singh and
Raja Buniyad Singh were some of the persons of distinction put to death by Mir
Qasims order at this time.
67
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 5046.
156
68
NA, Hoge Regering Batavia, 246, Second memoir concerning Bengal, written by Louis Taillefert, Hooghly, 17 November 1763.
69
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 4378.
70
Cotton, The Memoirs of Gentil, p. 11.
71
Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 4558. The Dutch at Kasimbazar also had the information
that Mir Qasim welcomed the Seth brothers and presented them jewels and worth
Rs. two lakhs. In return, the Seth brothers paid him a narna of 100,000 gold
muhrs (NA, Nederlandse Bezittingen in Voor-Indie, no. 42, L. Vernet and J.J.
Kingma at Kasimbazar to L. Taillefert, 14 May 1763, not foliated). But according to Cotton Mir Qasim refused to accept the hu for Rs. 25 lakhs they oered
the Nawab upon their arrival at Monghyr. Not only that, they were put in chains
157
as traitors who had broken their oath to conne their activity to banking operations (Cotton, The Memoirs of Gentil).
72
The exact date is, however, not mentioned (Seir, Vol. 2, pp. 5002). Citing
Khojamalls work, Seth maintains that Gurgin died on August 11, 1763, after the
battle of Udhuanala (Seth, Armenians in India, p. 400). According to Tapanmohan
Chattopadhyay, Gurgin died on the day Major Adams arrived at Palkipur before
the battle of Udhuanala (Chattopadhyay, Palasir par Buxar, p. 177).
73
The letter was written on 3 October and read at the Council on 10 October
1763 (Long, Selections, no. 681, p. 333).
158
pirate of the southern sea, which has stimulated individuals to robbery, even to murder. In point of morality, the members of the governing clique of Calcutta from 1761 to 1763, Mr. Vansittart and Mr.
Warren Hastings excepted, were not one whit better than the perpetrators of such deeds.74
74
160
3
Muhammad Kabir, Afsna-i Shhn-i Hind (Storey No. 675), BL, Add. 24,409,
. 25v27v; Hindi trans. by Rizvi, Uttar Taimur, I, pp. 3734; see also S. Digby,
The Indo-Persian Historiography of the Lodi Sultans, in F. Grimal (ed.), Les sources
et le temps (Pondichry, 2001), pp. 24364. Rizvi wrongly amends Mubr (clearly
pointed in the manuscript) to Miynr. The forms Mubr for Mubrak and Az
Humyn for A'zam Humyn (Sarvani) are evidence of the independent oral transmission of the anecdotes.
4
For the identication with JWKA. see below.
5
This leaves open questions of conict or competition of this great Rajput
amir appointed by the Sharqi Sultan with the Ujjainiyas and tbe Baghelas with
their strongholds at Baksar and at Bandhogarh. From Muhammad Kabirs anecdote there was a boundary between JWKA and the Baghelas before the fords or
ferries of Kantat and of Jhusi/Arail. Control of the latter played an important part
in Baghela regional politics at this time and later in the sixteenth century. As in the
case of the Baghelas the area of inuence could be extensive but dominance even
over the smaller core area guarded by their main stronghold was often tenuous.
161
It is said that Mubara Khan had crossed the Ganga and was attacking the fortress of Khairigarh. Chunar was also close and he resolved
to attack in that direction also. The news reached Sultan Husain in
Bihar. There was a Rajput Amir appointed by Sultan Husain in
Chaund. He had control of all places from Chunar to the river Son.
There was also a wja (eunuch?) of Sultan Husain in Chunar. That
wja wrote to Sultan Husain that Mubara Khan had made an attack
on them. Then Sultan Husain made ready a great army, and sent a
message to that Rajput saying Fight Mubara Khan if it is within your
power!
Mubara Khan was defeated, and during his retreat he was made
prisoner (at the ferry of Jhusi) by the Baghela ruler of Bhatta. According to Muhammad Kabir:
Such a battle took place that Mubara Khan himself was wounded and
many of the Afghans and the rest of their army were killed. Mubara
Khans army was routed. As Mubara Khan was eeing after this defeat,
there was a Raja on the road called Bhaid (i.e. Bhaidachandra of
Bhatta) and he became his captive.
6
This reference to rearms may not be anachronistic. Iqtidar Alam Khan, in a
study of explosive weapons in medieval India now in the press at OUP, New Delhi,
has argued a case for the diusion of explosive weaponry of far-eastern origin from
eastern India during this period, which enhanced the ghting potential of Purbiya
soldiers. One may note that Muhammad Kabir gives a more convincing description of the order of battle than Mushtaqi does of the later engagement at Chaund.
162
from Nizam al-Din Ahmad and Mushtaqi, whose contrasting narratives we present in chronological sequence:
1. Sikandar Lodi after returning from Gwalior, spent 24 days in
Dehli (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). After conquering Bayana. he was
in Dehli, and on the third day news came that Mubarak Khan
Nohani having fought against Joga Hindu had taken to ight after
defeat. The Sultan set o instantly eastwards from the polo-eld
(Mushtaqi). The year of this expedition was 897 [November 1491
October 1492] (Nizam al-Din Ahmad).
Comment: The instant setting out of the Sultan from his game on the
polo-eld is formulaic and used in other anecdotes. The immediate
departure of the Sultan when the news of Mubarak Khans defeat
reached him is unlikely, and. as we shall demonstrate below, chronologically impossible. An interval, probably of months, must have
elapsed after their victory over Mubarak Khan south of the Ganga
at Chaund before the insurgents were in control of central Jawnpur
territories around the capital. Evidence, cited below, suggests that
insurgents were after this in control of the area around the capital
of Jawnpur for a period of several months in AH 896 (November
1490November 1491), one year previous to the date mentioned by
Nizam al-Din Ahmad.
2. Sher Khan, brother of Mubarak Khan, had attained martyrdom
(Nizam al-Din Ahmad).
Comment: As the Indo-Afghans fought in tribal contingents, it is likely
that Sher Khan was one of the casualties in this rst engagement
outside Chaund. His principal widow remained at the Nohani base
at Karra, and was later married to Sultan Sikandar.7
3. Mubarak Khan when crossing the ferry of Jhusi Prayag was
taken prisoner by the boatmen. Ray Bhaid (Bhaidachandra) of Bhatta,
when he became aware of this, took him from his captors and held
him prisoner (Nizam al-Din Ahmad). JWKA pursued Mubarak
Khan and made him a prisoner (Mushtaqi).
Comment: In contrast to Mushtaqis recollections, Nizam al-Din Ahmads
account of Mubarak Khans capture by Bhaidachandra, the chief-
163
8
Gulbadan Begam, Humyn Nma, ed. and trans. A.S. Beveridge (London, 1902),
text, p. 41; trans., pp. 1356; Jawhar, Takirt al-Wqi't, BL, Add. 16,711, f. 24v.,
trans. S.A.A. Rizvi, Humyn Kln Bhrat (Aligarh, 1961), I, p. 608. The decisive
detail is Humayuns order for a bridge over the water to be pulled down to prevent pursuit. A reference to the Ganges by name in Stewarts old translation is not
supported by Mss.
9
Rukn al-Din Quddusi, Lat"if-i Qudds (Dehli, 1311/1894); see also S. Digby,
'Abd al-Qudds Gangoh (14561537): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval
Indian Su, Medieval India: a Miscellany, 3 (1975), pp. 166.
164
The evidence of a Su biographer
Lat"if-i Qudds, pp. 301, 64; Digby, 'Abd al-Qudds Gangoh, pp. 9,10.
Firishta, Ta"r, (Bombay, 1831), I, pp. 3278; discussed in S. Digby, The
Indo-Pers1an Historiography, pp. 2568.
12
Abul Fazl, "n-i Akbar. trans. H.S. Jarrett, rev. J. Sarkar (Calcutta, 1949),
p. 185; W. Crooke, The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh
(Calcutta, 1896), pp. 956.
13
Lat"if-i Qudds, p. 31.
11
165
Ibid.
Lat"if-i Qudds, p. 64.
Crooke, The Tribes and Castes, pp. 934.
Nawkar-i man ast; see below.
166
birth as 5 Jumada I, 896 (c. 4 April 1491).18 This implies that Abd
al-Quddus must have settled in Shahabad not later than the early
months of 1490. Before this we have to t in the crossing of the
Ganga northward by JWKA, the spread of insurgency in a region
extending 150 kilometres from Jawnpur through Sultanpur and beyond
Rudawli, and the establishment there of kr administration and
then time for Shaikh Abd al-Quddus to make up his mind to leave,
send an emissary to Sultan Sikandars camp and travel with his family and Su followers some hundreds of kilometres to Shahabad.
This suggests a date of before midwinter 1489 for the initial disaster of the rout of Mubarak Khan outside Chaund. Sikandar Lodi
ascended the throne on 17 Shaban 894 (c. 9 September 1489).19
This allows perhaps fteen months in which must be tted Sultan
Sikandars early struggles against his kin, and particularly the war
against Barbak Shah and his earlier visit to Jawnpur. Nizam al-Din
Ahmad also gives 897 (November 1491October 1492) as the date
of the end of the siege of the great fortress of Bayana, which the
same author repeats when he describes Sikandars eastward march
some weeks later to suppress the rebellion.20 Both writers are agreed
that one event followed the other, and there is no reason why the
date should not be correct for both events. But, contrary to the statements of both authors, Sultan Sikandar would have had news of
Mubarak Khans defeat many months before. Possibly he considered
that the situations in Gwalior and Bayana more urgently demanded
his attention than what was emerging in the former territories of the
Jawnpur sultanate. With this span of time Mushtaqis stirring account
of Sikandar receiving news of the disaster, then setting out from the
polo-eld without time to snatch a meal in Khan Jahans encampment (d"ira), and within ten days putting the rebel to ight is manifestly the tall tale we may previously have suspected it to be.21 The
swift setting out of Sultan Sikandar on his victorious expedition is a
formulaic element in such narratives. Muhammad Kabirthe only
narrative source independent of the synoptic historiestells how
Sultan Sikandar set out from the polo-eld at Bayana to vanquish
not JWKA, but the Jadon chieftains in the hills west of Bayana.22
18
19
20
21
22
167
23
24
168
25
Cf. Dirk Kol, Naukar. Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour
Market in Hindustan, 14501850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 1601.
26
Nizam al-Din Ahmad, trans., I, p. 360 and n. 4. The translators propose the
identication Kahtar = Katahr, i.e. the country now known as Rohilkhand. This
is geographically unlikely.
27
N.B. Roy, Niamatullahs History of the Afghans (Santiniketan, 1938), pp. 74, 139;
Abdul Halim, History of the Lodi Sultans of Delhi and Agra (Dhaka, 1961), p. 66.
169
28
29
170
According to Mushtaqi:
30
171
35
172
173
Sultan Husain sent one of his great Amirs, Mir Saiyid Khan, with
an unsuitable answer ( jawb-i nraw), saying that JWKA was his
servant (naukar-i man ast). He added that Sikandars father was a soldier and he had struck him with his sword. Sikandar was an ignorant boy, and he would strike him with a shoe! According to Mushtaqi,
Sikandars reply to this was that he had not acted with folly:
My intention is to punish a kr. If/Sultan Husain/wishes to support
a kr, in that case/I/will be obliged/to act/. I have not acted gratuitously. This is a Muslim community ( jam"at-i musalmnn). You hear
that from/Husains/mouth the word shoe has come out. If Allah
wills, it will reach that mouth!
41
Abd al-Haqq Dihlavi notices Barani as a historian in his Takira-i Musannifni Dihl; trans. Shams al-Lah Qadiri (Haydarabad, n.d.), p. 8. Abdal-Haqq was greatnephew of Mushtaqi. Among the Indo-Afghan historians Ahmad Yadgar mentions
Barani as a model to imitate (Ta"r-i Shh, p. 2).
42
Cf. Mushtaqi, trans Siddiqui, p. 27.
174
Those familiar with the later history of sub-Gangetic India will have
no diculty in recognizing the muqaddams of Gahora and Bakhesar
as the Baghela chieftain of Bhatta-Gahora and the Ujjainiya chieftain
of Baksar. Like JWKA of the Bachgotis half a century later, by 1444
AD they were commanders in the army of Jawnpur, with strongholds south of the Ganga. The same hostile line of argument is later
adopted against such non-Muslim warlords as Medini Rai, Silhadi
and Puran Mall.
43
Kirmn, Ma"ir-i Mahmdshh, ed. Nur al-Din Ansri (Delhi, 1968), p. 59.
175
176
charisma of a holy man, his own subsequent career also shows some
of the characteristics of a leader of a warband.48 As he moved through
Kalpi and Chanderi and Mandu he soon had followers who were
able to resist forcibly the coercion of local powerholders. Yet after
an interval the group were always impelled by the threat of conict
with superior numbers to move onwards after they had outstayed
their welcome. Their form of social organization was the da"ira, the
circle, which in the Indo-Persian records of warfare of the early
sixteenth century is used for the nightly stockaded encampment of
a warband on the march, commanded by its amir or captain in
the central tent (dera, now meaning a tent is corrupted from da"ira
and both forms are used interchangeably in manuscripts of the IndoAfghan histories and other narratives of campaigns of the period,
e.g. Bayazid Biyat).49
In the central and west Indian lands through which Saiyid
Muhammad and his followers marched, their presence served as a
magnet for discontented and dissident members of courtly groups,
and some of these joined the faithful. The rulers and those in power,
unless they thought they could derive some advantage from the presence of the Saiyid and his followers or the adoption of his ideology,
were anxious to move the party onwards. In Gujarat, when, Saiyid
Muhammad proclaimed himself the Mahdi after his pilgrimage to
Mecca, tensions exacerbated. The next rest was in Sind, where the
ruler had to provide boats to take the band across the Indus. After
Balochistan, the end of the trail was in the marginal area of Farah,
where for several years no other contenders rivalled his charisma or
were powerful enough to dislodge Saiyid Muhammad. When the
Mahdi died at the age of 63, he bequeathed what he stated were
48
A non-Mahdavi source sheds incidental light on Saiyid Muhammads links with
the Muslim traditions of the Awadh countryside. One Shaikh Khizr, known as
Shaikh Khan, described as a maternal rst cousin (birdar-i lte) of Saiyid
Muhammad, was a senior alfa of Shaikh Abd al-Quddus, whom he joined at
Shahabad (this suggests that he had previously been with Abd al-Quddus in Rudawli,
before the Bachgoti revolt of 1491). Later a longing for travel seized him. He left
Shahabad and later went on pilgrimage. After his return from Mecca, in Gujarat
he met Saiyid Muhammad who instructed him in ps-i anfs (Yogic control of
breath) before he returned to Rudawli (Lat"if-i Qudds, pp. 36, 389). For this
regional Su environment and Yogic inuences upon it, see also Digby, 'Abd alQudds Gangoh, pp. 166.
49
Cf. the account in Mushtaqi repeated by Abd al-Lah of the deras that Sikandar
Lodi provided for the captured Amirs of Husain Shah (Mushtaqi, trans. Siddiqui,
p. 29; Abd al-Lah, Ta"r, p. 4a).
177
50
178
54
1
This essay was originally written 10 years ago and was intended to be a chapter in my PhD thesis on the Rohillas. For the present purpose I have considerably
revised it, skipping the parts that were published in the thesis, with the exception
of the description of the Bangash nasab (see J.J.L. Gommans, The Rise of the IndoAfghan Empire, c. 17101780 (Leiden, 1995), pp. 1715). The revision was facilitated
by the comments of Dirk Kol who, some years ago, had a look at this droppedout chapter and advised me to rework and publish it.
2
Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tr-i Farrubd, British Library, Oriental and
India Oce Collections (OIOC), Or. 1718, f. 10b; M. Elphinstone, An Account of
the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1972), p. 51.
3
For details, see: W. Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad, Journal of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Part 1, 47, 1 (1878), pp. 35764.
180
NAUKAR
181
1. Slavery
Bangash Nasab
The Bangash tribe derived its name from the hilly area, north of the
Sulaiman mountains, from Bannu to the Safed Koh, in between
the Indus and the Kurram river. Its main centre, situated along the
lower river valleys was the town of Kohat, also synonymous with
the area called Lower Bangash or Pain Bangash. Under Mughal
rule this area had been a nominal district (tmn) of the Kabul
province.4 The area was of some importance as it provided an alternative northern route to the Khyber pass from Kabul to Peshawar
and India. The Mughal emperor Babur, however, describes it as
rather peripheral and being infested with nothing but Afghan highwaymen and thiefs, such as Khugianis, Khirilchis, Turis and Landars;
all of whom, obviously, declined to pay taxes. Nevertheless, in 1505
Babur decided to raid and plunder the district following some intelligence about its great riches.5 Indeed, in Kohat the Mughals found
cattle and corn in great abundance but they were not able to settle the area on a permanent basis since most of the tribes could
temporarily retreat into the more impregnable upper hills called Bala
Bangash or Kurram. For any central government, either from Delhi,
Qandahar or Kabul, these hilly tracts of the Bangash tmn always
remained an obstreperous area. As a result, Shiite Islam and heterodox movements, such as that of the Roshaniyya, mostly combined with and fuelled by anti-Mughal resentment, remained very
strong indeed in this area.6
Before the sixteenth century, there did not exist a separate tribe
or sub-tribe which was actually called Bangash. The seventeenthcentury Mazan-i Afn does not mention them at all. Most of the
inhabitants of Bangash envisaged themselves to be the descendents
of one Karlani, and were known under various sub-headings such
as Orakzais, Turis, Malik-Miris, Baizis and Kaghzais. The latter
182
7
H.G. Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan and Part of Baluchistan (London, 1888), pp.
38990.
8
Haz Rahmat Khan, Khulat al-Ansb, OIOC, Egerton 1104, f. 84b; Muhammad
Wali al-Lah, Tr, . 6ab.
9
For the Rohilla case, see Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, pp.
16371.
10
Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tr, f. 10b; Haz stresses the requirements for a
proper nasab to be at least four generations (Haz Rahmat Khan, Khulat,
f. 15a).
NAUKAR
183
184
The Nawabs attitude towards the other Bangash was always somewhat ambivalent. In order to raise their solidarity and group feeling
he had to associate them with his government and with the inner
circle of his sons and slaves (nazdas). This, however, made them
powerful and always potentially dangerous. Consequently, he also
needed to dissociate himself from them and keep them on a safe
distance. The ethnical nomenclature reected this continuous need
for association and dissociation: the Bangash label could serve the
tendency of inclusion while, at the same time, the Kaghzai identity
could stress the exclusiveness of the Nawabs nasab.
The Farrukhabad household
The core of the Bangash powerbase in Farrukhabad was the domestic household: the Nawabs wives, sons and nazdas. This latter
group consisted primarily of his sons and his personal slaves or chelas.14
Those Bangash who were not part of the core household were
attached to it by being married to the Nawabs daughters. In general we may say that the Nawab made his sons, slaves and sons-inlaw his most trustworthy instruments of power by bestowing land on
them in jgr or in'm and by entrusting them with the most crucial
positions in the administration and the army.
The marriage rules of the Bangash household were relatively strict
in order to maintain their exclusive status. Hence, beyond the household, the Bangash sub-tribe delineated the more or less endogamous
marriage group. The Bangash Pathans declined, for example, to
intermarry with Rohillas and even marriages with the esteemed
Awadhi ruling family were considered problematic.15 Although the
Nawabs daughters were exclusively married to his Bangash brethren,
rules for the male members of the family were less rigid. They sometimes married women from another distinguished Pathan tribe or
accepted women from all kinds of people but as ladies and concu-
14
Khnazda literally means son of the house or household born one and
indicates clearly the slaves inclusion in the household. For nazdag ethos under
Mughals, see J.F. Richards, Norms of Comportment among Imperial Mughal
Ocers, in B.D. Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority, The Place of Adab in South
Asian Islam (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 2627; and D.E. Streusand, The Formation of the
Mughal Empire (Delhi, 1989), pp. 1468.
15
OIOC, Orme Mss. o.v. 173, . 1712; Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1,
p. 350.
NAUKAR
185
16
Shivdas Lakhnawi, Shhnma Munnawar Kalm, trans. S.H. Askari (Patna, 1980),
p. 5.
17
330.
339.
373.
2, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
186
21
Cf. Begams at Awadh court: R. Barnett, North India Between Empires. Awadh, the
Mughals and the British 17201801 (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 1002. For a similar case
at Bhopal: S.N. Gordon, Legitimacy and Loyalty in some Successor States of the
Eighteenth Century, in J.F. Richards, Kingship and Authority in South Asia (Madison,
1978), pp. 287300.
22
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 2, pp. 5960.
NAUKAR
187
ing of the begams, the Bangash and other Pathan sardrs or the
chelas, but also, on the external mechanism of imperial power and
authority.
Chelas
The Bangash Nawabs systematically recruited personal slaves who
were entrusted with the most vital posts in the administration, the
revenue collection and the army. These slaves played a signicant
role as a kind of articial family in-group which was entirely attached
to the person of their patron. The Farrukhabad slaves were basically identical to the elite military slaves of the Turko-Persian world,
called mamlk in Arabic, ulm in Persian and kul in Turkish. Though
technically meaning slave, these words carried a connotation not
of enslavement or the servility of the Uncle Toms kind, but, on the
contrary, of power and dominance. The model for this kind of elite
slavery was highly developed in the Middle East and Iran ever since
the decline of the caliphate. Until the nineteenth century the mamlk system worked exceedingly well and succeeded in perpetuating
and stabilizing the existing structures of the Islamic state.
In the Indian setting, the elite slaves of the Bangash Pathans and
other Afghans were commonly referred to as chelas, i.e. disciples. This
was consistent with the existing Indo-Mughal paradigm. Nonetheless,
Muhammad Khan Bangash, who introduced the chela system from
the start of his rule in Farrukhabad, preferred to call his chelas: atfli sarkr or children of the state. Other appellations include alib
bacha or aanfar bacha which both refer to Muhammad Khans personal progeny.23 These names seem to indicate an Afghan approach
to the slave as being regarded as the (adopted) son (walad ) of his
master-patriarch (wlid ). As such the master and his slave developed
relations very similar to those of a family. Hence, the natural sons
of the Nawab, were to be regarded as the brothers of the chela, like
the chelas felt brothers of each other and the death of a chela had
also to be revenged by his Bangash brothers. Chelas were as close to
the person and body of the Nawab as were his sons. Like his own
children, at a young age chelas were displayed in public on the lap
of the Nawab. Similarly, the Nawabs principal wife, the Bibi Sahiba,
23
188
observed no purda to the closest chelas of the Nawab. The chelas were
also allowed to sit in darbr immediately next to the Nawab and his
sons. Riding on his elephant, two chelas were always closely seated
behind him. Not surprisingly, their preferential treatment could give
rise to feelings of envy and annoyance among the Nawabs sons as
the following story given by Irvine shows:
One day Bhure Khan [chela and n"ib of Allahabad] coming into darbar late, could nd no place to sit; kicking away the pillow separating Muhammad Khan and Qaim Khan, he sat down between the
Nawab and his son. Qaim Khan turned angrily to his father and said:
You never respect me. Muhammad Khan replied that he loved them
as he did his sons. Qaim Khan got up in rage, and went o to his
home in Amethi. Muhammad Khan then scolded Bhure Khan saying
that he had lost condence in him, for if while he was alive they did
not respect his sons, who knew what they would do when he was
dead. Bhure Khan putting up his hands, said: May God Almighty
grant that I never see the day when you no longer live.24
Although chelas could never lay claim to the leadership of the Bangash
clan, in the wake of their master, some of them were able to acquire
great wealth and two of them were allowed to bear the title of
Nawab themselves. Nawab Ahmad Khan Bangash himself was styled
Bar (senior) Nawab, his chela Zulqar Khan, nim of Shamshabad,
was called Majhl (middle) Nawab and his chela Daim Khan, in charge
of Shahpur-Akbarpur, was called Chhot ( junior) Nawab.25 Besides,
like the Nawabs sons, many of the chelas were allowed to ride in
plks or on elephants.26 All this may illustrate how the chelas were
incorporated into the household of the Bangash Afghans. As adopted
sons they became part of the patrimonial family of the Bangash ruler
and as such were co-sharers of his realm. This was, however, only
one side of the coin. What about the indigenous feedback to this
Afghan model?
In a way, the life of a military chela tted in well with the martial outlook of the Hindustani peasantry. Dirk Kol has already
stressed the importance and extensiveness of the armed peasantry in
Hindustan, where, as late as the nineteenth century, military sports
24
25
26
NAUKAR
189
were very much a part of the daily life of the village.27 Moreover,
Rajput values stimulated the complete devotion in service to a rightful patron. As analysed by Norman Ziegler, the Rajput chkar bond
to their Mughal patrons was a product of identication and obligation generated through the establishment of personal bonds and
aliations sanctioned by local custom, and the fullment of cultural
aspirations and ideals, dened in local myth and symbol. In this
symbolism the kingdom or thkurat was a marriage between the ruler
or thkur and the conquered land, which came to his care and protection. All his subjects were regarded as his children and in particular his servants and clients were his sons. In this sense, the Rajput
ideal is the complete devotion to the thkur.28
As this Rajput outlook underscored the bond between Mughal
patron and his Rajput client, it applied no less to the even more
intimate relationship between the Afghan master and his Rajput chela.
Of course, unlike the chela, the chkar could preserve his freedom,
caste and religion. Nevertheless, the chela, as the adopted son of his
master, came even closer to the ideal of utter and exclusive devotion. Indeed, chelas could turn into venerated personalities, local
heroes, or otherwise become the centre of Rajput ritual. This was
the case with one of Muhammad Khans principal chelas, Dilir Khan.
He was originally a Bundela Rajput but as 'mil in Bundelkhand he
became an important chela of Muhammad Khan. After his death in
a battle against his own kinsmen the following local custom grew up
in Bundelkhand:
every son of a Bundela, on reaching the age of twelve years, is taken
by his father and mother to Maudan, where they place his sword and
shield on Daler Khans tomb. They make an oering, and the boy
then girds on the sword and takes up the shield, while the parents
pray that he may be brave as Daler Khan.29
In general, we may say that, on the one hand, the chela institution
of Farrukhabad was originally a predominantly Turko-Persian phenomenon which, through Turkish and Afghan channels, was imported
27
D.H.A. Kol, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour
Market in Hindustan, 14501850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 1731.
28
N.P. Ziegler, Some Notes on Rajput Loyalties during the Mughal Period,
in J.F. Richards (ed.), Kingship and Authority in South Asia (Madison, 1978), pp. 21551.
29
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1, p. 286.
190
30
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1 p. 363; Nur al-Din Husain Khan Fakhri,
[Tawrkh-i Najb al-Daula], trans. J. Sarkar, Islamic Culture, 7,4 (1933), p. 617.
NAUKAR
191
192
skills and also on the drumming of his loyalty to the Nawab. When
a boy could read and write he was taken before the Nawab who
bestowed upon him, by way of il'at, one hundred rupees, a shield
and a sword. From among the chelas of 18 to 20 years of age the
Nawab selected 500 for his private bodyguard and trained them as
a picked regiment.34 Most of the others were entrusted with leading
positions in the army such as recruitment ocers (bash), cavalry
ocers (sawr-wl), heads (droa) of the stables and the elephant
establishment or commanders of forts (qila'dr). Some of them were
in the possession of large jgrs. They played a crucial role in the
revenue collection as ministers (diwns), collectors ('mils) and farmers (ijradrs), particularly at places where the collection was dicult
as a result of widespread Afghan landholding interests in areas such
as in Mau and Shamshabad. Some of them also gure as the Nawabs
deputy (n"ib) in the provincial government of newly acquired territories. Others feature as architects of public buildings. Niknam Khan
chela, for example, laid out the fort of Farrukhabad and built many
of its edices. Some 17 ganjs were founded by chelas. We also come
across them as founders of bazaars, caravanserais, bridges, step-wells
(b"ls) and as planters of gardens. In all these capacities chelas played
a pivotal role in stimulating cultivation and trade.
Apart from these critical military and administrative posts a score
of other chelas were employed in the household and the harem. These
were functions that derived their importance from their closeness to
the body-person of the Nawab. Some chelas were allowed to approach
the Bibi Sahiba unveiled such as attendants of the bath-rooms, keepers of the rosaries, attendants to help in the ablutions for prayers,
for driving away ies, and numerous other personal servants who
encircled the Nawab.35 This chela encirclement of the Nawabs person in his private departments was even literally reproduced in
the design of Farrukhabad-city. Not only around the central fort the
houses of his chelas were built, but also around the outer part of the
city, residences were allotted to the Nawabs sons and chelas.
Despite of his intimate and close relations with his chelas, there
was also a feeling of ambivalence and wariness towards them on the
part of the Nawab. Being entrusted with the most crucial positions
34
35
NAUKAR
193
of the state, the chelas were extremely liable to abuse their power
against the Nawab. Although they were deracinated and freed from
their former ties to society, this did not deprive them from looking
at their own personal interests or from being seduced to courtly
intrigue; even when this was against the interests of the Nawab himself. With this in mind, the rst Nawab frequently reallocated his
chelas from one province to another as every chela 'mil was not
allowed to stay more than two or three months in one province.36
In this way the Nawab hoped to screen his chelas from new vested
and local interests. Nevertheless, things could easily run out of control whenever a chela became too successful in collecting the revenue.
One example of this is the case of Islam Khan, chela of Ahmad
Khan, who was appointed faujdr of Kasganj. At his arrival there,
he started to procure money from the local bankers and landholders in return for a bond on the incoming revenue. Then he suddenly collected a following of some 5000 men and started to plunder
some of the neighbouring villages. On hearing of this threatening
development, the Nawab ordered Islam Khan to stop these dreadful activities immediately. Meanwhile the chelas troops had risen to
10,000. Amongst them were even numerous Pathans from Mau,
Qaimganj and Shamshabad. No wonder, Islam Khan declined the
order by answering that he only wanted to seat his patron on the
throne of Delhi. The Nawab, however, concluded that the chela had
rebelled and he asked the rajas of Hathras and Bharatpur to crush
the rebellion. After they had defeated Islam Khans army, the chela
returned to Farrukhabad and presented himself submissively to his
master. He was not punished heavily and after some time he was
even restored to his former post of bash.37
Similar apprehensions made the Nawab forbid chelas to construct
masonry structures. Nothing was to be built but with sun-dried bricks
and mud-mortar. Each chela was only allowed to build one single
brick room as a reception hall. In general, the Nawab appears to
have had a monopoly on building imposing brick buildings. 38
36
194
NAUKAR
195
41
S. Alavi, The Sepoy and the Company. Tradition and Transition in Northern India (Delhi,
1995), pp. 2012.
196
2. Naukar
Rise
As one of the principal personages among the Mau Afghans, Muhammad Khan had led many plundering and freebooting expeditions
especially into the Deccan and Bundelkhand. Most of the time he
put himself at the head of 500 to 1000 horsemen and became engaged
by one or other local raja who had to deal with rebellious landlords
or peasants in his territory. Frequently, a kind of contract was agreed
to in which part, usually one fourth, of the plunder, was reserved
for the chief, the jam'adr, and his troops, half of which was to be
forwarded in advance.42 The usual routine of such an expedition was
to realise the contract and to maximize its gains by discrete mutual
arrangement with the so-called rebels.43 A show of force and, sometimes even actually ghting could be useful as this could raise the
reputation of the gallant jam'adr and, so, could strengthen his bargaining position vis--vis potential employers or rivals. Whenever violence did occur it was to be presented, rather theatrically, as a
demonstration of the jam'adrs military ability to handle his horses,
guns and swords. Usually, however, violence was as much as possible avoided since it could harm the major assets of the expedition
itself: horses, men and, to a lesser extent, elephants. Hence, naukar
was a business of rational cost-benet analysis in which violence contributed to the naukars warlike prole but in practice had to be as
much as possible avoided.
In 1712, Muhammad Khan could muster around 12,000 troops
and had become a force to be reckoned with in Hindustan. During
the struggle for the Mughal throne between Jahandar Shah and his
nephew Farrukhsiyar, both claimants invited all major nobles and
chiefs to join them. After he had sent one of his agents to nd out
which side was most likely to succeed, Muhammad Khan joined
Saiyid Abd al-Lah Khan, main supporter of Farrukhsiyar. At the
ensuing battle, the Bangash appears to have served bravely as a com-
42
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1, p. 270. Note the similarity with the Maratha
protection rent of cauth (A. Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India (Cambridge, 1986),
pp. 447).
43
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1, p. 271.
NAUKAR
197
44
45
198
46
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2,
Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787, . 14892.
47
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1, pp. 3234. Cf. Farrukhabad coins found
in Afghanistan ( J. Rodgers, The Coins od Ahmad Shah Abdali, Journal of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal, 54 (1885), p. 72.
48
For some examples, see S.A.A. Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and his Times (Canberra,
1980), pp. 18283; and, Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 2, pp. 137, 157.
NAUKAR
199
49
F.X. Wendel, Les Mmoires de Wendel sur les Jats, les Pathan et les Sikhs, ed.
J. Deloche (Paris, 1979), p. 140.
50
For the economic position of Farrukhabad, see Gommans, The Rise of the IndoAfghan Empire, pp. 42, 96, 12833.
51
OIOC, V/23/136, Selections from the Revenue Records North Western
Provinces, Vol. 3 (Allahabad, 1873), p. 311; E.T Atkinson (ed.), Statistical, Descriptive
and Historical Account of the North Western Provinces of India, Vol. 7 (Allahabad, 18741884),
pp. 75,105,349.
52
OIOC, V/23/136, Selections from the Revenue Records North Western
Provinces, Vol. 3 (Allahabad, 1873), pp. 4123; Cf. E. Stokes, The Peasant and the
Raj, Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1980),
p. 75; and I. Husain, Agrarian Change in Farrukhabad District, Late eighteenth
and First Half of nineteenth Century. A Study of Local Collection of Documents
(Mimeo. paper Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, 1979).
200
53
H.F. Evans, Final Report of the Settlement of the Farrukhabad District (Allahabad,
1875), pp. 145; Atkinson, Statistical, Descriptive and Historical Account, p. 282.
54
OIOC, Bengal Revenue Consultations Ceded and Conquered Provinces,
P/90/39, 2091803, Agent Farrukhabad to Secret. Brd. of Revenue, 20 September
1803; P/90/40, Agent Farrukhabad to Secret. Brd. of Revenue, 30 December 1803.
55
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1, p. 305.
56
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1 p. 309; Z. Malik, Muhammad Khan
NAUKAR
201
202
58
For a detailed account of these events, see Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 2,
pp. 6077.
NAUKAR
203
worried as they felt that Ahmad Khan could not possibly be refrained
from proclaiming himself independent king. Consequently, a mammoth alliance of the emperor, Safdar Jang, the Jats and the Marathas,
secretly endorsed by the Rohilla leader Haz Rahmat Khan, was
created against him. Learning about what had happened, Ahmad
Khan immediately retreated his army into his own territories and
entrenched himself at his fort of Fatehgarh. On his way back, he
had lost most of his following as many of his mercenaries saw no
further prot in taking up a strong resistance with him. Meanwhile,
he had asked for help from the Rohillas and Sa"ad al-Lah Khan,
obviously without the backing of Haz Rahmat Khan, marched in
the direction of Fatehgarh to support the Afghan cause. What followed was a protracted siege during which endless negotiations were
held. After a while, Sa"ad al-Lah Khan suddenly retreated from the
scene and returned with his troops to Rohilkhand. Ahmad Khan left
alone facing fearful odds, immediately decided to follow the example of his former ally. The following year after the monsoon, the
Maratha and Awadh forces entered Rohilkhand but the Afghans had
withdrawn already into the Tarai jungle at the foot of the Himalayas.
During this campaign, news arrived from the west that Ahmad Shah
Durrani had entered the Panjab in order to assist his endangered
tribesmen. Feeling a growing uneasiness about the whole situation,
especially the Marathas became very keen on arriving at a rapid
peace settlement. Both parties agreed that Ahmad Khan would be
restored in his former position although he had to pass half of his
territory to the Marathas. The latter were allowed to extract 30 lakh
rupees. from these lands but subsequently had to hand this sum over
again to the Bangash.59
From 1752 to 1770, as most leaders lived in a continuous awe of
potential Durrani invasions, large parts of Hindustan experienced a
period of relative calm. Durrani and Maratha incursions were redirected to the Delhi-Agra region south of the Ganges which left the
major northern successor states of Rohilkhand, Farrukhabad, and
Awadh undisturbed. This was even so for large tracks in the Doab,
mainly under variable Afghan, Jat and Maratha rule. As we have
observed before, the Durrani campaigns engendered new prospects
59
204
for military service but also of long distance trade as new markets
were opened up for Hindustani goods in Afghanistan, Persia and
Central Asia. Besides, the successor states in northern India could
strengthen their position thanks to a renewed and sure supply of
war-horses and manpower from the Durrani territories.
What might in retrospect be concluded about the Bangash Nawabs
relations with the imperial court and the status he derived from this?
From the time of his rise to the manabdr status in 1712, Muhammad
Khan had been constantly engaged in the court politics of Delhi.
Although the Bangash Nawab, like fellow Afghan Ali Muhammad
Khan Rohilla, has been frequently related to the Turani faction at
court, this point should not be overstated. Muhammad Khan started
his career by being attached to the parvenu Saiyid brothers under
Farrukhsiyar. At the right time, following the declining star of the
Saiyids, the Bangash Nawab switched his loyalty from them to the
Turani noble Muhammad Amin Khan, Itimad al-Daula. During his
campaigns in the Deccan he, obviously, tried with fair words to placate Nizam al-Mulk to his side by stressing his traditional bond with
the Turanis and the Muslim mission of jihd. In practice, however,
this seems to be only a matter of articulation and form. In 1747,
Muhammad Khans successor Qaim Khan thought it opportune to
change sides again because, this time, the Irani noble Safdar Jang
had become the imperial wazr and an alliance with him held out
many new promises. And indeed, as related before, Safdar Jang now
procured for his new Bangash ally an imperial farmn in which
Rohilkhand was entirely made over to him. In general we may say
that loyalties at the royal court remained always extremely conditional and uncertain. This was as true for the so-called Irani and
Turani factions as for the Afghan solidarity feelings: defection was
the rule, patriotism the exception.60
How did the involvement in Mughal politics aect the Nawabs
prestige at home and amongst his fellow Afghans? Muhammad Khan
Bangash had risen to a rst-grade manbdr and badr over important provinces like Allahabad and Malwa. However, to his contem-
60
Cf. for example: J. Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Vol. 1: 17391754 (London,
1988), p. 250; Z. Malik, A Mughal Statesman of the Eighteenth Century, Khan-i Dauran,
Mir Bakhshi of Muhammad Shah 17191739 (Aligarh, 1973), p. 56; R. Joshi, The Afghan
Nobility and the Mughals, 15261707 (New Delhi, 1985), p. 195.
NAUKAR
205
poraries he continued to make a rather plain and soldier-like impression. He always wore clothes of the coarsest stu and in his audience hall and his house the only carpets were rows of common mats.
On these mats the Nawab sat together with his fellow Pathans and
chelas and all other persons and guests high or low, all enjoying the
same simple meal of pilo. At these occasions the Nawab always
excused himself as being merely a soldier. The contemporaries were
amazed to observe so much discrepancy between his great wealth
and power and the simplicity of his personal habits. This roughness
and general lack of adab sometimes could become rather embarrassing, in particular during imperial audiences at court, most notably
in 1739 when he had to present himself before Nadir Shah, and
had to live up to the expectations of one of the principal nobles at
the imperial court. Muhammad Khans clumsiness in matters of
courtly etiquette was articulated by the fact that he pretended not
to understand a single word of Persian, for which he had to be
accompanied by one of his sons.61 Clearly, rst and foremost, Muhammad Khan considered himself a soldier among soldiers, a Pathan
among Pathans.
The second generation of the Bangash family was much more cultivated and fully acclimatized to the Nawabi lifestyle and the etiquette and ceremony of the Indo-Persian court. Muhammad Khans
successor Qaim Khan on occasions used to adorn his personal fort
of Amethi sumptuously with canopies of precious broadcloth and
gold curtains. No ones horse, plk or elephant was allowed to enter
into the fort and all visitors had to dismount at the gate.62 Ahmad
Khan Bangash, even lived for much of his time in Delhi where he
enjoyed a luxurious life and started to collect precious books and
pictures from the imperial stores.63 His increased engagement at the
Delhi court was also reected in his appointments as mr-bash and
rst noble of the reign: amr al-umar.
Ahmad Khan began to consider himself as the leader of the IndoAfghan nobility. The Rohilla leaders more or less acknowledged,
albeit grudgingly, his rst-rate status as being a principal Mughal
61
206
64
Nur al-Din Husain Khan Fakhri, [Tawrkh], Islamic Culture, 7,3 (1933), p. 433;
Ghulam Hasan Samin Bilgrami, Indian Antiquary, 36 (1907), p. 15. For Rohilla aversion, see Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 1, p. 376; 2, p. 128.
65
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 2, p. 115.
66
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2,
Letter mother Muzaar Jang, 14 March 1787, f. 518.
67
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 2, pp. 1445.
NAUKAR
207
Ahmad Shah bestowed large plots of land in the Doab on him and
at court he gave him the right of rst entry, preceding all of the
other amrs.68 Later, however, the overall status of the Bangash chiefs
declined again, since, on the one hand, the Durranis started to raise
the power and pretensions of the Rohilla generalissimo Najib alDaula and, on the other hand, the Mughals became more and more
reliant on their eastern vassals: Shuja al-Daula and the East India
Company.
All in all, in spite of their proper nasab and strong regional powerbase, the legitimate authority of the Bangash Nawabs, both inside
and outside their own territories, still required Mughal or, to a lesser
extent, Durrani sanction. The Bangash had gained their supremacy
and their territory thanks to their naukar services to the Mughals
and, with that, had acquired rank and status within the Mughal hierarchy. This had amply increased their standing amongst their fellow
Afghans, not only because of imperial recognition but also because
through their patrons they could perhaps get access to court politics and to imperial farmns and sanads. Obviously, the Bangash
Nawabs being completely embedded into the existing Mughal hierarchy had much to loose and only hesitantly answered to the Durrani
claims of imperial sovereignty.
Decline
Towards the end of his lifetime, Ahmad Khan became blind and
more than before relied entirely on his principal chela and bash,
Fakhr al-Daula. When he died in 1771 the Nawabi succession became
hotly contested. Ahmad Khans oldest son, Mahmud Khan, born
from the Nawabs principal begam, was considered the only legitimate son. He had died, however, some years before and his son,
Himmat Khan, was still a minor. Ahmad Khans second son was
Dilir Himmat Khan alias Muzaar Jang. He was only fteen years
old and his mother, although she claimed Lodi descent, was regarded
as a mere slave girl from the zanna. However, Muzaar Jangs
claims to the masnad were propagated and endorsed by Fakhr alDaula against the wishes of the late Nawabs brothers. The ensuing
conict was decided by Muzaar Jangs mother who handed over
68
208
70,000 gold muhrs from her treasury to the chela.69 He also melted
down all the silver of the haudas and other furniture.70 With this
money he was able to hire a sucient following to checkmate the
other Pathans and to pay a proper nar to the Mughal emperor,
who subsequently acknowledged the legitimacy of Muzaar Jangs
succession.
Initially, the new Nawab was under the complete control of Fakhr
al-Daula. The chela tried to improve the nancial position of the
state by reducing the army and by raising the revenue on the rich.
This policy brought him in conict with the other great chelas of the
court and inuential Pathans, who, in a coalition with the young
Nawab, succeeded in killing him. This temporary coalition again
brought the old Pathan nobility to the fore, as Ahmad Khans brother
Khudabanda Khan now managed to dominate state aairs.71
Meanwhile, Farrukhabad had become increasingly involved in the
politics and intrigues of the Awadhi court. During the years 17714,
Muzaar Jang had taken part in Shuja al-Daulas campaigns against
the Marathas and the Rohillas, which recovered much of the lost
territories in the Doab. Shuja, however, played upon the Nawabs
authority problems at home and managed to annex not only all the
lands in the Doab but large parts of Farrukhabad state as well. In
return, he had been willing to support the claims of Muzaar Jang
against his Pathan rivals. In 1774, with the help of Awadhi troops,
Muzaar Jang ousted his uncle Khudabanda Khan and numerous
other Pathans from Farrukhabad and Mau and posted his own
ocials in their place. Although Nawabi rule appeared to have been
fully restored, Muzaar Jang had become totally indebted to the
Awadhi court. This new relationship also found its reection during
one of the Nawabs visits to Awadh, where he joined in the Muharram
festivities and openly converted to Shiite Islam.72
In 1775, the new Awadh ruler, Asaf al-Daula, decided to make
no further bones about it and wanted to seize the entire Farrukhabad
territory. Due to the mediation of the British agent in Lucknow this
69
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2,
Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787, . 14892.
70
Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 2, p. 154.
71
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2,
Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787, . 14892.
72
Atkinson, Statistical, Descriptive and Historical Account, p. 174.
NAUKAR
209
was avoided but instead it was agreed that Farrukhabad had to pay
an annual tribute (narna) of 4.5 lakhs, the payment of which was
to be supervised by a Lucknow agent (sazwal ) present at Farrukhabad.
In addition, a deputy to the Nawab (n"ib) was to be appointed to
control the Nawabs aairs. In fact, the sazwal started to control
the revenue aairs of the Nawab and in due course became the de
facto ruler in Farrukhabad. The niybat was a major fund raiser as
it became an oce which could be directly purchased in Lucknow
and, as a result, personal changes occurred frequently.73 All in all,
in 1775 Farrukhabad had lost almost three quarters of its former
territory, and its revenue had fallen from about 60 to 40 lakh in
1761 to about 10 lakh in 1775.74 Farrukhabad had changed from a
major Sunni Indo-Afghan power into a minor Shiite puppet state of
Awadh.
In the wake of the Awadh intervention, the East India Company
also entered Farrukhabad politics and as a tributary state of Awadh
it was incorporated into the British subsidiary political system. In
1777 British troops were stationed in Fatehgarh and three years later
a British agent was send to Farrukhabad to take charge of the annual
tribute, which was now earmarked for the Companys treasury. As
such, the British resident replaced the sazwal as manager of the
Nawabs nances. In the 1780s the state of the latter had been worsened again. The court and its household had become isolated from
the rest of the state and the incoming revenue had further decreased.
According to the British resident, John Willes, this was due to the
fact that: the Pathans seized and enclosed whatever land they chose,
the aumils absconded, the zamndrs resisted and the revenue of course
fell down. Only with the help of British troops, the Nawab was
able to collect the revenue which was, however, increasingly siphoned
o by the local zamndrs and revenue farmers who entrenched themselves in their mud forts. Because of the annexation of large territories by Awadh, many zamndrs controlled lands which overlapped
73
For a detailed account of these aairs, see OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret
and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, Willes to GG&C, 29 January 1787, .
14892.
74
For revenue gures, see Irvine, The Bangash Nawabs, 2, p. 157; OIOC,
Add. 60337, Shee Papers, Shee to Hastings, 15 July 1780, no fol.; OIOC, Home
Miscellaneous, 219, Minute GG, 22 May 1780, f. 541; OIOC, Bengal Proceedings,
Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/13, Willes to GGC, 30 July 1786, f. 550.
210
However, to the British resident, this state of so-called utter anarchy and confusion was entirely the fault of the Nawab and his personal ambiance of fraudulent and dissimulative chelas. The Nawab,
he opined:
is inclined to keep the generality of his relations in the most abject
poverty and to squander whatever he can get on a set of worthless
and abandoned cheelahs. To preserve to the Nabob from their rapacious hands any considerable sum has been a dicult task. They have
claimed with tumult assignments on the country and the Nabob, whose
disposition is a compound of imbecility, cunning and malevolence, has
been happy in distressing his diwan by the grant of their demands. It
is and has been long the misfortune of this country, that whoever in
oce endeavours to render the Nabob respectable, or restore his country to order is sure of experiencing every opposition.77
75
OIOC, L/Parl/2/20, House of Commons, Articles of Charge of High Crimes
and Misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, 4 April 1786, p. 5; Bengal Proceedings,
Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2, Willes to GG&C, 10 February
1787, f. 117.
76
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/13, Willes
to GG&C, 30 July 1786, f. 551; OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Military
Consultations, P/A/8, Willes to GG&C, 24 April 1785, . 34056.
77
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/13, Willes
to GGC, 30 July 1786, f. 551.
NAUKAR
211
Obviously, the Nawab had a dierent view about what had gone
wrong. According to his own analysis, the main trouble was Awadhi
and British interference. The sazwals and British residents had
deprived him from all his means to support his relatives and following. Besides, the brutality of Willes had been an aront and an
open challenge to his status and authority. He had not only sold the
Nawabs guns and elephants but he had also insulted him by installing
his brother as n"ib. As the Nawab pointed out:
It is an established principle among the chiefs in Hindostan, not to
entrust the management, or control as naib of their aairs, to their
own brother or son, on account of several apprehensions.79
78
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/B/14, Willes
to GG&C, 3 October 1786, f. 253.
79
OIOC, Bengal Proceedings, Secret and Political Consultations, P/Ben/Sec/2,
Muzaar Jang to GG, 12 February 1787, f. 106.
80
OIOC, Home Miscellaneous, 219, Minute GG, 22 May 1780, f. 565. Similar
pleas were raised by the Nawab of Rampur. For general unemployment among the
Afghans a few decades later, see R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper
Provinces of India, From Calcutta to Bombay (London, 1828), p. 138.
212
81
NAI, Foreign and Political Dept., S, No. 3, Nabob Vizier to Rajah Gobind
Ram, 15 February 1781.
82
OIOC, Add. 60337, Shee Papers, n.d, Shee to Wheler, no fol.; NAI, Foreign
and Political Department, S, No. 1, Bristow to GG&C, 29 July 1776.
83
OIOC, Home Miscellaneous, 219, Minute GG, 22 May 1780, . 5434.
NAUKAR
213
Only later during the century many of the losses were compensated
by increased trade in indigo, grain and cotton from the Doab and
Rohilkhand, but now the general trade pattern had been completely
turned upside down.84 Farrukhabad had become more and more
incorporated into the eastern economies of Awadh, Bihar and Bengal
as it became an important channel of communication with the now
more peripheral areas of the Doab and Rohilkhand. Again, economic redirection had coincided with political and even religious
realignments. As trade became reoriented to the east, the IndoAfghan courts turned from their Sunni Afghan allegiances with the
Durranis and Rohillas in the west, towards full Shiite Irani aliations
to Awadh in the east.
The tributary relation with Awadh was ended in 1801 when the
annual narna was directly transferred to the Company. One year
later the Nawab ceded the entire sovereignty of Farrukhabad to the
British government who settled upon him and his heirs an annual
stipend of 108,000 rupees.
Conclusion
Slaves in India
The history of the Bangash Nawabs is an interesting case study of
Indian military slavery. In fact, it represents a last ickering of a sixcentury old phenomenon. The rst Muslim raids into India in the
twelfth century and the eventual conquest and occupation of Hindustan
at the end of the thirteenth century was for a great deal accomplished by Turkish mamlks or bandagn in the service of the Ghaznavid
and Ghurid dynasties in Afghanistan and Khorasan. As a result, the
Turko-Persian blend of the mamlk system was introduced in India
through Ghaznavid and Ghurid channels and became the mainstay
of the Delhi Sultanates until it underwent a perceptible decline
from the fourteenth century onwards.85 Indigenous elements became
84
For a general survey of Farrukhabad trade in the late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth century, see A Siddiqi, Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State (Oxford,
1973); and C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townmen and Bazaars, North Indian Society in the Age of
British Expansion 17701870 (Cambridge, 1983).
85
A. Wink, Al-Hind. The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. 1: Early Medieval
India and the Expansion of Islam 7th11th Centuries (Leiden, 1990), p. 23.
214
86
Abul Fazl, The Ain-i Akbari, Vol. 1, trans. H. Blochmann, H.S. Jarrett (New
Delhi, 19778), pp. 2634.
NAUKAR
215
purse. Of course, the idiom of tribe, religion or caste played its role
in the formation and rationalisation of alliances but what strikes most
is the repeated tendency to cut across rigid party lines. This extreme
pragmatic, no-nonsense attitude of Indian politics was underpinned
by the sheer endless availability of both cheap military labour and
ready cash to pay for it. In these circumstances, naukar made slavery almost superuous and rather expensive in comparison with selftrained free retainers. Moreover, the imprinted loyalty of the chela
itself continuously tended to dissolve into the conditional naukar
alliance of the free mercenary.
Nonetheless, during the eighteenth century we still nd chelas, some
of them eunuchs, entrusted with important positions at the local
Indian courts, most notably in Awadh and the Afghan principalities
of Rohilkhand and Bhopal.87 Among the Afghans, the number of
chelas which one was able to sustain, to a large extent contributed
to their overall status.88 They were, however, not employed on a
large scale and, as a rule, were recruited locally. Outside India, however, the mamlk institution was still ourishing and at some places
even found renewed vigour as under the Durranis in Afghanistan,
the Mamluk Pashaliq of Baghdad,89 the Bu Said Sultanate of Muscat,90
and the Uzbek Ming Khanate of Khoqand.91 In eighteenth-century
India, there are only two examples of the large scale recruitment of
chelas. The case of the Nawabs of Mysore, who not only recruited
from local sources but also bought military slaves from Karim Khan
Zands Persia, is interesting but still awaits further examination.92
The other exception is the chela system of Farrukhabad.
87
For the chelas at the court of Awadh, see M.N. Fisher, A Clash of Cultures:
Awadh, the British and the Mughals (New Delhi, 1987), pp. 536; at Bhopal, see
J. Malcolm, A Memoir of Central India (London, 1823), p. 121.
88
Wendel, Les Mmoires, p. 118.
89
T. Nieuwenhuis, Politics and Society in Early Modern Iraq (Den Haag, 1982),
p.13,25 (mainly Georgians and Circassians).
90
Abdul Sheri, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (London, 1987), p. 37 (mainly
Africans and Baluchis).
91
T. Saguchi, The Eastern Trade of the Khoqand Khanate, Memoirs of Research
Department of the Toyo Bunko, 24 (1965), p. 64 (more than 20.000, mainly Kirghiz).
92
M. Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India (Madras, 1869), Vol. 1, pp. 4067,
527, Vol. 2, p. 392.
216
Slaves in Farrukhabad
The case of Farrukhabad epitomises Indias experience with military
slavery. Being introduced from a Turko-Persian context, military
slaves were highly instrumental in conquering and establishing a new
homeland for their Afghan masters. Initially, slaves served well to
counterbalance the power of the Pathan chiefs. At the same time,
as implied by the label chela, slavery was reformulated in indigenous
Indian terms focussing on Rajput heroism and spiritual devotion.
Meanwhile, on the imperial level, the Bangash Nawabs were most
successfully beginning to exploit the endless opportunities oered by
naukar. This gained them enormous riches and honours which further strengthened their position both in Farrukhabad and among the
Mughal nobility. In this situation, slavery lost a great deal of its
appeal as even the chelas themselves could hardly be expected to
withstand the immense gravitational force of the military labour
market.
The end of the eighteenth century, though, witnesses a sudden
slump in the Nawabs naukar trade. At the same time, we are faced
with a remarkable revival of the Farrukhabad chelas. Being deprived
of its extensive external military service networks, the court now
increasingly turned in on itself, giving free reign to the indoor
chelas and begams in control of the domestic treasury besides to all
kinds of new businessmen in charge of collecting the local land revenue. The intervention by Awadh and the British further undermined the external reach and the internal legitimacy of the Nawab.
So within half a century, the rustic image of the courageous warrior Muhammad Khan, loyally served by his hero-chela Dilir Khan,
changed into the decadent picture of the eeminate dandy Muzaar
Jang, treacherously manipulated by his courtier-chela Fakhr al-Daula.
Far from being a colonial construction only,93 this orientalised pictureindeed created by the British residents at Farrukhabadwas
also a factual indication that the days of the free military labour
market of northern India were numbered.
93
For a discussion of this aspect, see R. OHanlon, Issues of Masculinity in
North Indian History: The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad, Indian Journal of Gender
Studies, 4,1 (1997), pp. 119.
1
Between North India and the Deccan lies the extensive range of hills
called Bundelkhand. From the tenth century till the early part of the
thirteenth century this region was dominated by the Candela dynasty.1
After that local tribal chiefs styling themselves Bundelas gradually
extended their control over Bundelkhand. In the sixteenth century
the Bundelas exercised power over Bundelkhand. From that time
more becomes known about their history. During this period the
main Bundelas are in chronological order: Rudrapratpa (1501
1531), Bhraticada (15311554), Madhukara ha (15541592),
Rma ha (15921605) and Bramsiha (16051627).2 Since the
fourteenth century Gahakura, 30 miles north-east to Jhs,
had been the capital of the Bundelas. But in 1531, the last year of
his reign, Rudrapratpa moved his capital to Och situated on the
river Betav which ows into the Yamun. This geographical position of Och seems to have been more convenient for the purpose
of trade and to have oered a better prospect of participating in the
economic development of that time.
During the sixteenth century the history of the Bundelas who came
more and more to the front, became closer interwoven with that of
the contemporary sultans of Delhi: Ibrhm Lod (15171526), the
Mughals Bbar (15261530), Humyun (15301540; 15551556),
Akbar (15561605) and Jahgr (16051627), as also the Afghan
era aha who in 1540 dethroned Humyun and ruled until 1545,
the year of his death. The Bundelas constantly had to confront the
1
For the history of the Candelas see H.C. Ray, The Dynastic History of Northern
India (Early Mediaeval Period) (Calcutta, 19311936), Part 2, pp. 666737.
2
The dates mentioned here have been taken from C.E. Luard, Orchha State
Gazetteer (Lucknow 1907), pp. 1722. Their historicity, however, is not quite certain.
218
2
Keavadsas conception of Bundela kingship is marked by the Bhaktimovement of that age. Bhakti literally means participation and is
used to express a relationship between man and god which bears a
personal character and is based on mutual love. Bhakti can, therefore, best be understood in the sense of love of god. It was especially directed at Rma and Ka as incarnations of the god Viu.
In this connection it may be observed that these two incarnations
show a structural dierence, on the one hand, and are complementary, on the other. While Rma is a king/god, Ka is a pastoral deity. As king Rma belongs to the established society and has
the responsibility of maintaining the dharma, the moral order of society. That means that he is bound to the dharma. On the other hand,
Ka as cowherd belongs to the wilderness and is outside of the
established society so that he by nature transcends the dharma.
Bhakti in itself is already known from ancient times. But in the
sixteenth century it experienced a strong revival and rapidly spread
all over North India. In Bundelkhand Vindhyavsin Dev, The
219
goddess dwelling in the Vindhya, had from of old been the general object of worship, and in particular the clan deity (Kula-dev) of
the Bundelas.3 She was a local form of Dev, The [great] goddess,
the spouse of the god iva and regarded as his akti, Energy. Her
cult was centred in Vindhycala, 5 miles to the west of Mirzapur
situated to the south of Benares, the ancient bulwark of ivasm. But
with a view to gaining a place in the general religious constellation
of the sixteenth century, about the middle of that century the Bundelas
in the person of the then king Madhukara ha changed over to
Bhakti. As a result, in Och a process of Viuisation started which
at the end of the sixteenth century and in the beginning of the seventeenth century led Keavadsa as the court poet of the Bundelas
to set their kingship in the perspective of Bhakti. For this purpose he
utilized a carefully considered synthesis of the Rma-bhakti and the
Ka-bhakti in accordance with which the structural dierence between
the king/god Rma and the pastoral deity Ka as well as their
simultaneous complementariness enabled him to gain an all-embracing
conception of Bundela kingship.
3
Keavadsa does not put his conception of Bundela kingship in the
form of a ready-made theory. This conception rather is to be inferred
from his works in general and his genealogy of the Bundelas in particular. Keavadsa wrote 9 works in all which according to their
genre may be classied as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
220
combination of the two current genres of Bhakti-poetry with the panegyrical genre of bardic literature. The panegyric genre in its nature
is destined for the purpose of singing the praises of either the Bundelas themselves or Jahgr as their Mughal patron. But its allegorical tendency adds a dimension relating to Keavadsas conception
of Bundela kingship to it. The two current genres of Bhakti-poetry,
though indirectly, are also connected with this conception. For in
his Rma-epics and Ka-lyrics Keavadsa gives a literary form to
the two components of Bhakti whose synthesis underlies his conception of Bundela kingship. It is noteworthy that he puts his Kalyrics in the form of two poetics. In this connection it is well to
remember that Ka as a pastoral deity at the same time is a divine
lover, with the result that Ka-lyrics by nature bears the character of a numinous emotionality. Keavadsa, therefore, aims at making Ka-lyrics controllable and eective for his conception of Bundela
kingship by systematizing it according to the Sanskrit theory of literary esthetics.4
Keavadsas genealogy of the Bundelas is found in the following
three works:5
1. Kavipriy I, 661.
2. Vracaritra III, 2054.
3. Vijnnagt I, 1527.
The Vijnnagt, Song of praise to true knowledge (1610), is an
allegorical drama and for several reasons of interest. But since its
Bundela genealogy is strictly speaking not a genealogy, this work can
be left out of consideration. The Kavipriy, Beloved of the poets
(1601), is one of the two poetics in which Keavadsa systematizes
Ka-lyrics and treats of the theory of the gures of speech (alakrastra). The Bundela genealogy serves as an introduction to this work.
This in itself already points to the connection that exists between
4
For Keavadsas canonization of Braj Ka-lyrics, see G.H. Schokker, De
gemeenschap van de kenners tegenover de goddelijke luisteraar. De literaire esthetica van het Sanskrit en de expressie van liefde voor de god Ka in het werk van
de Hindi dichter Keavadsa, in W.L. Idema (ed.), De vorsten van het woord. Teksten
over dichterschap en pozie uit Oosterse tradities. Studies en vertalingen (Amsterdam, 1983),
pp. 7797.
5
These works have not yet been translated. For an edition of their original text,
see Vivanthaprasda Mira, Keava-Grathval (Allahabad 19541959), 3 pts.
221
4
In the Kavipriy Keavadsa starts the Bundela genealogy with the
following three stanzas (I, 68):
At the request of Brahm and the other gods Rmacadra manifested
his incarnation in the solar race of kings in order to remove the whole
burden of the earth.
In his family, says Keavadsa, king Bra, an enemy of the Kali-yuga,
brave in battle and provided with the fame of the Gaharavras, was
born.
To him king Karana was born, who was the light of the dharma on
this earth and after conquering the entire world made Benares his
royal residence.
The rst stanza contains the traditional formulation of Rmas incarnation according to which god Rma became incarnate in order to
remove the whole burden of the earth, i.e. to restore the dharma
6
See Vracaritra II, 20 which in translation runs as follows: O Dna, receiver
and giver are one and the same. Charity and desire have one and the same cause.
In every body dwells one and the same soul. In the entire world shines one and
the same form.
222
7
For the traditional motif of the Indian incarnation-doctrine, see P. Hacker, Zur
Entwicklung der Avatra-Lehre, Wiener Zeitschrift fr die Kunde Sd- und Ostasiens, 4
(1960), pp. 4770. For the treatment of this motif within the context of Bhakti see
G.H. Schokker, Die Menschwerdung Gottes in der Bhakti-Poesie, in G. Oberhammer
(ed.), Beitrge zur Hermeneutik indischer und abenlndischer Religionstraditionen. Arbeidsdokumentation
eines Symposiums, Sitzungsberichte der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Wien,
1991), Band 537, pp. 21329.
223
This information about Rmas son Kua rests on an ancient tradition which already occurs in the Vlmki-Rmyaa.10 To the present
subject it is of particular importance that Kuasthal, Kuas place,
For the history of the Gaharavras see Ray, The Dynastic History, 1, pp. 50449.
See Ray, The Dynastic History, 1, pp. 5078.
10
See H. Jacobi, Das Rmyaa. Geschichte und Inhalt nebst Concordanz der gedruckten
Recensionen (Bonn, 1893), p. 205.
9
224
225
5
There exist dierent versions of the legend in question. But the earliest known version occurs in Gore Llas Bundela genealogy called
Chatrapraka, Splendour of Chatra (1714).11 Like the Vracaritra, the
Chatrapraka traces the Bundelas via Kua back to Rma.12 But the
two works also show distinct dierences. Thus the Chatrapraka lacks
the tradition Keavadsa in the Vracaritra took from the VlmkiRmyaa that Kua transferred the seat of his reign from Ayodhy
to Kuavat.13 Further the Vracaritra mentions Brabhadra as the rst
son of Kuas family who became king of Benares. On the other
hand, the Chatrapraka represents Brabhadra as the last but one
descendant of Kua who as Gaharavra king in fact still reigned in
Benares.14 Finally the Vracaritra has it that Brabhadra had Bra as
son. But according to the Chatrapraka Brabhadra had two wives.
To the rst wife four unnamed sons were born, and to the second
wife one son called Pacama, The fth, was born.15 After that the
Chatrapraka relates a legend which describes Pacama as the actual
founder of the Bundela dynasty by linking him up with Vindhyavsin
Dev.16
According to this legend Pacama was the favourite son of
Brabhadra and, though being the youngest son, made by his father
his heir. But on Brabhadras death Pacamas four brothers rebelled
against him, dispossessed him of his properties and divided the kingdom into four parts. Thereupon Pacama had recourse to Vindhyavsin Dev in her temple at Vindhycala and for a long time practised
all sorts of severe asceticism in order to win her favour. Ultimately
11
This work has not yet been edited in its original Braj text but is only known
from a translation by W.R. Pogson, A History of the Boondelas (Calcutta, 1828).
12
See Pogson, A History, pp. 45.
13
According to the Chatrapraka (Pogson, A History, p. 5) Kua and seven of his
successive descendants stayed on at Ayodhy and it was only Kuas eighth descendant who settled in Benares. However, the names of the descendants of Kuas as
mentioned in the Chatrapraka do not correspond with those as mentioned in an
early Sanskrit standard work like the Viu Pura. Cf. H.H. Wilson, The Vishn
Pura, a System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition translated from the original Sanskrit and
illustrated by Notes chiey derived from other Puras (London, 1840), p. 386.
14
See Pogson, A History, p. 5.
15
Ibid.
16
See Pogson, A History, pp. 58.
226
17
For the function of the number 5 as a symbol of totality in the Veda and the
Mahbhrata, see respectively F.B.J. Kuiper, The Three Strides of Viu, in
E. Bender (ed.), Indological Studies in Honor of W. Norman Brown (American Oriental Studies,
47 (1962)) p. 148; and G.J. Held, The Mahbhrata. An Ethnological Study (Amsterdam,
1935), p. 120.
18
See P.V. Kane, History of Dharmastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil
Law) (Poona 1946), Part 3, pp. 414.
227
19
228
6
The foregoing raises the question as to the historicity of the descent
of the Bundelas from the Gaharavras as claimed by both Keavadsa and Gore Lla. Here it should be established at the outset that
neither Brabhadra nor his son Bra described by Keavadsa in
the Vracaritra are known from the history of the Gaharavras. Since
Pacama referred to by Gore Lla in the Chatrapraka is the subject
of a legend, he, too, cannot be identied with a historical Gaharavra.
But it is a striking fact that Gore Lla represents Brabhadra as the
last but one descendant of Rmas son Kua who as Gaharavra
king still reigned at Benares.
From history it is known that the last Gaharavra king of Benares
was Jayacandra who is much praised in bardic literature. In 1194
he was defeated and killed by sultan Muhammad Ghr at Candrvara
near the Yamun, in the Etawah District.21 This meant the fall of
the Gaharavra dynasty. However, from the time after Jayacandras
death two inscriptions of the Gaharavras are known.22 Both inscriptions date from 1197. The rst inscription mentions Haricandra,
the son of Jayacandra, as donor and has been found in Machalahara,
in the Jawnpur District. The second inscription has been discovered
in Belkhara, 12 miles to the southeast of Cunra, in the Mirzapur
District. Although in the second inscription the donor is not mentioned by name, he is supposed to be identical with the donor of
the rst inscription. From the geographic position of the places where
the inscriptions have been found, it may be inferred that Haricandra, the son of Jayacandra, even after the fall of the Gaharavra
20
229
23
See A. Cunningham, Report of Tours in the Gangetic Provinces from Badaon to Bihar
in 187576 and 187778, Archaeological Survey of India, 11 (1880), p. 129.
230
231
24
232
of the connoisseurs of literary moods (1591), wherein he systematizes Braj Ka-lyrics according to the Sanskrit theory of literary
moods (rasa-stra). In the introduction to this work (I, 14) he states
that he aims at composing such a feeling poetry that it can bring
the mind of the clever Ka under control.25
Keavadsas conception of Bundela kingship furnishes an instructive example of how at the end of the sixteenth century and in the
beginning of the seventeenth century, in an Indian state a balance
between temporal and spiritual authority was sought on the basis of
a synthesis of two structurally dierent but simultaneously complementary forms of religious worship. This threw a new light on the
old precarious relationship between king and brahman. In Keavadsas
view the king stands for the king/god Rma, while the brahman
participates in the transcendent rule of pastoral deity and divine
mediator Ka, thus granting ultimate authority to the king.
25
For a more detailed discussion of this subject, see G.H. Schokker, The Control
of the Uncontrollable, in M.K. Gautam and G.H. Schokker (eds.), Bhakti in Current
Research 19821985 (Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Delhi, 2001), pp. 13543.
The East is a career. That saying could often be heard in nineteenth-century England. The East meant the Asian colonies, and
foremost among them British India. In utter disregard of its huge
population, long history and rich culture, the saying reduced India
to a eld of opportunity for enterprising British who wanted to make
a career in colonial administration, military service or business life.
Hidden behind that saying, however, still lay another possibility: all
those who proved unable to make a decent living at home or had
even become socially undesirable could as a last resort always escape
to India or another colony to try their luck. The career-maker as
well as the fortune-hunter are types we frequently come across when
studying Charles Dickens, both in his ction and in his family life.
Already in an early work such as the Pickwick Papers, the colonies
turn out to oer a welcome alternative to those seeking the success
that had eluded them at home. The medical students Bob Sawyer
and Ben Allen happen to pass their examinations, thanks to a temporary blindness of their teachers, but to the great relief of their
patients their practice in Bristol goes bankrupt. Thereupon the two
friends leave for Bengal, both gentlemen having received surgical
appointments from the East India Company. In the nal chapters
of David Coppereld, fallen women like Emily and Martha get the
opportunity to start a new life in the colonies, at the same time purifying England of their shame. The best-known example of adventurers leaving for Australia undoubtedly is Mr. Micawber from the
same book. After England has failed to provide him with an employment opportunity that oers sucient scope to all his manifold talents, he and his family embark for Australia in the rm conviction
that something will turn up over there.
Dickens was not only looking to the colonies as a solution for
dicult cases in his ction, he also used them for private problems
1
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Dickensian, 98 (2002), pp. 1429.
234
in his own family life. The sons of Dickens were, with one exception, not very successful in their social careers. At their baptisms
they received impressive names, but in later life they generally proved
unable to live up to the expectations thus raised. They tried all kinds
of jobs and occupations, but most of them without success, and to
the great dismay of their father they were constantly plagued by
debt. Another remarkable fact is that Asia, and especially India,
played a large part in the Dickens family.
Dickenss sixth son, Harry (Henry Fielding), was the sole exception to the family rule. He was clever and energetic, and made the
best of both assets. His father intended him to join the Indian Civil
Service, the prestigious colonial steelframe, but Henry preferred a
career as a lawyer and proved rather successful in that profession.
One of the sons that did go to India was Frank (Francis Jerey).
After several attempts in business, publishing and even the Ministry
of Foreign Aairs had failed, he nally joined the Bengal Mounted
Police. After his fathers death, he returned to England, but to the
great relief of his embarrassed family soon left again, this time to
join the Canadian Mounties. Alfred (dOrsay Tennyson) and the
youngest son Plorn (Edward Bulwer Lytton) also were not very fortunate in their pursuits in England and successively set sail for
Australia, where they led a rather inconspicuous existence. Dickenss
second son, Walter Landor, left for India as a military cadet in 1857.
There his eldest brother Charles (Culliford Boz) came to visit him
a few years later. Charles was travelling through Asia to buy a large
amount of tea, but he failed miserably as an importer. Sydney (Smith
Haldimand), maybe the most reckless spender of all the Dickens children, chose the navy as the scene of his failure and died young.2
In this contribution to the volume our main attention will be
focused on Walter Dickens. Contrary to Sol Gills nephew (Dombey
and Son), this Walter was never to return home. After a brief military career he died in Calcutta in 1863. What I want to discuss here
is the connection between Charles Dickens and India as manifested
in the short life of Walter. Unfortunately, there is not much information available on the Indian experiences of this son of Dickens.
2
Information about Dickens sons in Edgar Johnson (ed.), Letters from Charles Dickens
to Angela Burdett-Coutts: 18411865 (London, 1953), pp. 16, 378; Idem, Charles Dickens:
His Tragedy and Triumph (London, 1977), pp. 522, 559, and Martin Fido, Charles
Dickens: An authentic account of his life and times (London, no date), pp. 959.
235
His letters from India have not been preserved. In his own correspondence, however, Dickens often referred to Walters preparations
for India and his military adventures in the East. Also, the Oriental
and India Oce Collections of the British Library in London, the place
where I rst met Dirk Kol many years ago, hold some precious
papers that document part of Walters life as servant of the East
India Company. Aided by this scanty source material I will try to
give an outline of Walters Indian career.
It is absolutely impossible to discuss the link between India and
the Dickens family without mentioning the name of Miss Angela
Burdett-Coutts. In her personal descent Miss Burdett-Coutts combined the dignity of an old family with the wealth of rich bankers.
As heir to an immense fortune and with connections in the highest
circles she was an eagerly sought-after marriage-partner. In spite of
that, she was not to marry before old age. The major part of her
active life was devoted to social and philanthropic work, like the
improvement of sanitary arrangements in slum areas and the rehabilitation of prostitutes. In these endeavours Charles Dickens became
her most determined supporter and assistant. She had made his
acquaintance shortly after his rise to fame and they were to become
trusted friends and regular correspondents. According to Fido, she
was the only woman whom Dickens treated with respect as an intellectual equal, without romantic idealisation.3 More than 500 letters
from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts have been preserved and a
large part of them have been published in a volume by Edgar
Johnson. As she was also actively interested in the education of the
children of the Dickens family, he regularly reported to her their
progress and achievements at school. For any research on Walter
and his Indian adventures these letters represent a valuable source
of information.
The link between Miss Burdett-Coutts and India was established
by the East India Company (EIC). In the rst part of the nineteenth
century, this commercial organization was extending its power over
the Indian subcontinent by pursuing a vigorous policy of territorial
annexation. The EIC was a multinational enterprise with large administrative powers, only remotely controlled by the British Parliament.
Together with the Bank of England the EIC formed the nancial
3
Quoted in Fido, Charles Dickens, p. 76. A brief summary of Miss Angela BurdettCoutts life can be found in the introduction to Johnson, Letters.
236
foundation under the City of London. From the registers of this EIC
one may conclude that Miss Burdett-Coutts was a large shareholder.
In the 1850sand most probably much earliershe held more than
3000 in Company shares, which entitled her to a double vote in
the meeting of shareholders. Apart from that, it qualied her for the
position of a Director, although that was not a very obvious choice
at that time. She was however, well-acquainted with several ociating
Company Directors and could use these inuential connections to
confer appointments on people she personally preferred. On her
request, John Loch, one of the Directors of the EIC, used his right
of patronage to grant Walter, the son of Mr. Charles Dickens the
author, a direct appointment as cadet for Bengal (1856).4 That did
not mean that Walter was exempted from the necessary entrance
examination.
Walter had been born on 8 February 1841, when the Dickens
family was still living at Devonshire Terrace. He was named after
Dickenss friend Walter Savage Landor at Bath, where Dickens had
stayed some time the year before.5 His father described him as not
so quick or sensitive and with no uncommon abilities, but a hardworking, patient capable child, who will always do his duty with
great punctuality and a high sense of responsibility. When Walter
was only eight years old, Dickens was already pondering the question of the future for which he had to prepare this son. It was Miss
Burdett-Coutts who suggested for him a military career in India and
Dickens responded eagerly. He gave her as his opinion that Walter
was better tted for life in India than his brother Charles and in
any case much more safely to be left to himself. In conclusion he
assured her: I feel certain he would strive on and do well in India.6
Like Charles, Walter attended Kings Private School in St. Johns
Wood, where Kings own daughter taught classical languages as a
4
Oriental and India Oce Collections (OIOC), L/MIL/9/241, Letter from
John Loch to John Hollyer, Clerk for Passing Cadets and Assistant-Surgeons, East
India House, 6 March 1856, f. 495.
5
Letter from Charles Dickens to his wife Catherine, Bath, 1 March 1840, in
Walter Dexter (ed.), Mr. & Mrs. Charles Dickens: His letters to her (London, 1935), pp.
89. See also J.W.T. Ley, Dickens and Walter Savage Landor: A Much Esteemd
Friend, The Dickensian 12 (1916), pp. 14554.
6
Letters from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Devonshire Terrace, 7 December
1849; and Folkestone, 18 June 1854, in Johnson, Letters, pp. 156, 266. For a sketch
of Walters character, ibidem, p. 16.
237
Dickens kindly declined the nancial support, oered by Miss BurdettCoutts for Walters preparations for India, but was tenderly touched
by her generous gesture. He answered in reply that Walter would
be ready for his examination in March 1857, and that it would be
238
far better for his health, certainly for his spirits, and no less for his
duties to leave immediately after.
The staying with his brothers and sisters with that unsettled purpose
on him and cloud of departure hanging over him, would do him no
good . . .11
239
The remaining part of the rst and the second page contained printed
questions that Walter had to answer himself. They referred to his
education and travelling insurance, and asked him to guarantee that
his appointment was obtained by proper means. After the question
What is the profession, situation, and residence of your Parents or
nearest of Kin, Walter simply lled in: My father Charles Dickens
14
OIOC, L/MIL/9/241, Applications for East India Company Cadetships, .
4938.
15
The underlined names have been entered on the printed form in handwriting. The space behind the Season remained empty. The form does not seem to
have made allowance for women as recommending persons, as it gave only he.
240
Esq., Tavistock House. On the third and last page Miss BurdettCoutts certied that she had received Walters nomination as a cadet
for Bengal gratuitously and expressly, being well acquainted with
his family. At the backside of the last page Dickens testied that
Walter was his son and that the appointment of Walter was received
through the gratuitous solicitation of Miss Burdett-Coutts without
any payment being made. Witness my hand, 1421857.
The application papers contain some enclosures. An extract from
the Register Book of Baptisms of the Parish of Saint Marylebone
states that Walter was born on 8 February 1841 as son of Charles
J.H. Dickens and Catherine Thomson. This rendering of his mothers
name would cling tenaciously to all later EIC documents relating to
Walter. Also, on 23 March 1857 a medical certicate was added to
the le and a testimonial by John Brackenbury of the Wimbledon
School, stating that Walter had been instructed in the knowledge of
his religious duties.
In this way all requirements for an application had been met, yet
Walter still had to go up for his India examination. That took
place on 7 April 1857 and he passed successfully. To Walters Cadet
Papers a certicate of the EIC Military College was added saying
that he was examined and found qualied for admission into the
East India Companys service. The certicate was signed by three
Professors who were specialists in Mathematics and Classics, Fortication and French.16
A few days later Dickens wrote a letter to Miss Burdett-Coutts
telling her that Walter had returned home radiant and gleaming.
He had passed his examination in a most creditable manner and
was one of a small number of boys out of a large number who had
emerged from the Ordeal triumphant. Dickens added that Walter
was anxious that I should tell Miss Coutts that he hadnt been
spunwhich means rejected.17
Thereupon, a period of hectic activity began for Walter. During
the few months that rested before his departure his father arranged
for his learning to swim, to ride, to fence, and to become acquainted
with the use of gun and pistol, a skill that seems to have been
16
OIOC, L/MIL/9/241, Walter Dickens Examination Certicate of the Companys Military College, 7 April 1856, f. 497.
17
Letter from Dickens to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Gravesend, 9 April 1857, in
House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 311.
241
18
Correspondence summer 1857, especially Letter to Mr George Beadnell, Gads
Hill, 5 June 1857 and Letter to Miss Burdett-Coutts, Tavistock House, 10 July
1857, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, pp. 341., 372. Also Johnson,
Letters, p. 343.
19
Letter from Dickens to John Deane, Gads Hill, 21 July 1857, in House
et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 382.
242
20
D.H.A. Kol, Naukar, Rajput & Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market
in Hindustan, 14501850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 178.
21
Letter from Dickens to W.J. Eastwick, Tavistock House, 1981857, in House
et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, pp. 416417. Walter travelled via Malta and the
overland Suez-route.
243
ing events found their echo in Dickenss reference to these distracted Indian times in a letter dated 4 September.22 Walter had
sent a third letter from Suez, but on 4 October his family had not
yet received word from him from Calcutta. For that letter, they had
to wait untill the next Mail. No wonder that from the autumn of
1857 Dickens was following the news on India in The Times with
keen interest and shared in the general indignation about the slowness of reinforcements being sent to India. Dickens particularly criticized the system of purchasing commissions, which made it virtually
impossible for sons of the middle class to move up in a colonial
administration that was dominated by a small elite. He portrayed
that elite in Little Dorrit as the great family of the Barnacles:
wherever there was a square yard of ground in British occupation
under sun or moon, with a public post upon it, sticking to that post
was a Barnacle. No intrepid navigator could plant a ag-sta upon
any spot of earth, . . ., but to that spot of earth, as soon as the discovery was known, the Circumlocution Oce sent out a Barnacle and
a despatch-box.
It is not often, as Peter Ackroyd has commented, that a great novelist recommends genocide.24 But Dickens was swept along in the
general indignation raised by the news of English women and
children being massacred by the mutineers. In that heated state of
22
244
mind he wrote a Christmas story for Household Words, in collaboration with Wilkie Collins, entitled The Perils of Certain English
Prisoners, which brought out the horrors of the Mutiny and its
main characters situated on a ctitious Caribbean island.25
Originally Walter had been gazetted in the 26th Regiment of
Bengal Native Infantry. When he arrived in Calcutta, on 30 August
1857, he found that the Regiment was disbanded due to the Mutiny.
Thereupon he was assigned to H.M.s 42nd Highlanders, a unit of
the British Army in India. He was by now, as Dickens recorded,
in the thick of the Indian tussle. The Mutiny aected primarily
the Bengal Presidency and the North of India, and it was in these
parts that the most embittered battles were fought. With the utmost
eort and the vital support of loyal Indian troops from other parts
of the subcontinent the British were able to prevent the uprising
from spreading to other areas. In September Delhi was recaptured
and even before reinforcements had arrived the back of the Mutiny
was broken. Walters corps, the 42nd Royal Highlanders, played an
important part in this decisive turn. It fought in the battle of Kanpur
(December 1857) and took part in the relief of Lucknow (March
1858). On both sides dreadful acts of violence were perpetrated, but
as a matter of course the English press dwelled extensively on the
cruelty and unreliability of the Indians. In another ash of temper
Dickens blamed the colonial administration for knowing nothing of
the Hindu character, and the Asses in power for believing that
England, while doing nothing, was doing everything. He scorned
English ladies for rushing after visiting Indian Princes, whereas they
should know better. He warned them:
You know faces, when they are not brown; you know common expressions when they are not under turbans; Look at the dogslow treacherous, murderous, tigerous villains who despise you while you pay court
to them, and who would rend you to pieces at half an hours notice.
Therefore, he entirely rejected the suggestion made in a proclamation by Lord Canning, Governor-General of India, that mercy should
form the corner stone in the building of a new India: [g]reater mistake was never committed in the world.26
25
William Oddie, Dickens and the Indian Mutiny, in The Dickensian (68) 1972,
pp. 317.
26
Letter from Dickens to Emile de la Rue, Oce Household Words, 23 October
1857, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 473.
245
27
Letter from Dickens to Mrs Watson, Tavistock House, 7 December 1857,
in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 448.
28
Letter from Dickens to Mrs Gore, Tavistock House, 7 September 1858, in
House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 8, p. 654.
29
OIOC, L/MIL/10/65, No. 696, Bengal Army Service List (1857). Quotation
from Letter Dickens to W.W.F. de Cerjat, Tavistock House, 1 February 1859 and
3 May 1860, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 9, pp. 21, 247.
30
OIOC, L/MIL/5/75, Vol. I: Mutiny Medal British Army Infantry, p. 417.
Walters name was included in the original roll for Indian medals of October 1858,
but for some unknown reason the medal reached him only several years later.
246
31
Letters from Dickens to Mr. W.J. Eastwick, Tavistock House, 26 April 1859;
and Regents Park, 14 February 1861, in House et al. (eds.), The Letters, Vol. 9, pp.
53, 386. Fido, Charles Dickens, p. 97.
247
32
248
Remarkable, apart from the fact that Walter seems to have had no
mother, is the wrong statement about his age.
36
249
We may conclude that Charles Dickens had a close personal connection with British India through the adventurous lives of some of
his sons. That did not mean that Dickens was really interested in
the Indian people and their culture. For him, India remained a land
of tigers, heat and Rajahs smoking curled golden pipes of incredible
length, as pictured with Jack Maldons departure as a cadet for India
(David Coppereld). The existence of a British empire in Asia was in
no way questioned by this otherwise outstanding social reformer who
so sharply analysed and exposed to ridicule the evils of his own society. In Dombey and Son Major Bagstock is introduced as one who had
served in Pune (British-India) and after retirement had brought home
an Indian servant, known as the Native, whom he treated all day
with barbarous contempt. But the idea never occurred to Dickens
that old Joe Bagstock with his rough manners might personify British
policies in the colonies at large. Indian students of Dickens never
tire of reminding us that Dickens, so consistent in his championship
of the underdog at home, envisaged with total equanimity the exploitation of millions of Asians abroad.39 The only imaginable, though
rather weak excuse, put forward by Peter Ackroyd, is Dickenss disgust at the way certain philanthropists attended to distant causes
while ignoring those closer to home, like Mrs Jellyby (Bleak House).
Nevertheless, from Dickenss point of view, India was interesting primarily as an opportunity for his unfortunate progeny to make a better living than they could aord at home. For him also, the East
was rst of all a career.
39
Sajni Mukherji, Telescopic Philanthropy: Attitudes to Charity and the Empire
in Charles Dickens, Economic and Political Weekly, 16 (1981), p. PE17.
252
Before turning to why the text was written the way it was and to
its career, we want to introduce James Tod, the author, by characterizing his life, career and accomplishments. Next we turn to analyzing and explaining why and how he wrote The Annals and Antiquities
the way he did. Our concluding section will examine how and with
what consequences the Annals were read by the principal protagonists of the text, the Rajputs of Rajasthan, the warriors who ruled
its ancient kingdoms; by ocials, defenders and critics of the East
India Company and its successor in 1858, the Government of India;
and by Indian nationalists. The result should show how Tods Rajasthan
shaped Rajput, imperial and nationalist identity and historiography.
Like the story for Americans of the Puritans eeing persecution and
establishing a city on the hill in the new world, Tods story for
Indians of valorous ancient Rajput kingdoms has become an origin
myth.
Introducing Tod
Tod has not found a place in Philip Woodru s The Founders,
the title of Volume 1 of Woodru s [actually Philip Masons] inuential
two volume The Men Who Ruled India, a pantheon for East India
ocials who ruled India from Clives victory at Plassey in 1757 until
the mutiny and rebellion one hundred years later in 1857. During
his 23 years (17991822) of arduous service to the Company he surveyed and mapped western India, the India that stretched from
Saurashtra in the far west to the Doab in central India; played a
critical role in establishing British hegemony on the subcontinent by
providing the intelligence needed for victory over the Marathas in
1817; contributed to the remarkable outburst of Orientalist learning
associated with the Asiatic Society of Bengal by, inter alia, establishing the study of numismatics in India and, most remarkable of all,
over a four year period in Mewar (Udaipur), gathering the materials and doing much of the research for The Annals.
The seventeen year old James Tod arrived in Calcutta in 1799
to begin service in the Companys Bengal Army. He had been
appointed a cadet on the recommendation of his well-connected
uncle, Patrick Heatley. Prior to his departure for Calcutta he had
attended a short training course at the Royal Military Academy at
RAJASTHAN
253
Woolwich.1 Apart from his limited professional and technical training at Woolwich, little is known about his education prior to his
departure for India. His education, including the likelihood that he
was something of an autodidact, is a matter of some mystery. We
are left to wonder about his education because of his subsequent
command, in The Annals and Travels, of the literature of the Scottish
enlightenment, ancient Greece and Rome and of his own time, the
late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. His family on both
his fathers and his mothers side were part of Scotlands remarkable eighteenth century diaspora.2 His father, James Tod, married
Mary Heatley in New York in 1779 but his son, also James, was
born in Islington, near London, on 20 March 1782. Soon after his
marriage, James senior, along with his brother John, left America
for India where they became indigo planters at Mirzapur. By 1782
when young James was born, the brothers had left India. Although
it seems young James grew up in England, little is known about his
life as a child or where or how he was educated.
Young James had a deep and distinguished Scottish lineage. The
family of his maternal grandfather, Andrew Heatley, held a landed
estate in Lanarkshire for four centuries. Andrew Heatley had immigrated to Newport, Rhode Island where he married Mary Grant,
daughter of Suetonious Grant, a resident of Newport since 1725
when he had immigrated from Inverness, Scotland. Suetonious had
sold the baronetcy he had inherited from his grandfather to his
cousin, Alexander Grant, a successful London merchant who seems
to have been the person who formally nominated young James to
the EIC cadetship that his uncle, Patrick Heatley, is said to have
arranged for him.3
1
For the early history of East India Company training institutions and their
eect on knowledge about and perceptions of India, see B.S. Cohn, Recruitment
and Training of British Civil Servants in India, 16001860, in Ralph Braibanti
(ed.), Asian Bureaucratic Systems emergent from the Imperial Tradition (Durham NC, 1966).
2
The Scottish diaspora is extensively dealt with in Arthur Herman, How the Scots
invented the Modern World (New York, 2001). See in particularly the six chapters of
Part II: Diaspora.
3
Biographical information about James Tod has been gleaned from a variety of
sources. Most useful for biographical informationand for framing and interpretative questionshas been Jason Freitags 2001 PhD dissertation in History at Columbia
University (The Power which raised them from Ruin and Oppression: James Tod,
254
After his arrival in India, James Tod served the Company in central and western India in military, surveying, intelligence and political capacities as it contested with the Marathas to be the successor
to Mughal hegemony on the subcontinent. When in 1818 the rulers
of kingdoms in Rajputana signed treaties recognizing the suzerainty
of the EIC, he became the Companys rst political agent at Mewar.
For years and at great cost to his health he camped in tents in harsh
climes to tirelessly map central and western India, also collecting and
preserving Rajasthan bardic literature. In his last four years (18181822)
he amassed the material and many of the ideas for his monumental work. Tod beneted greatly from access to what today is called
the Saraswati Bhandar, the Maharanas personal library. He was the
rst historian to examine and use the library. Much of the material
he deposited with the Royal Asiatic Society after his return to England,
including copies of fteen Sanskrit, Hindi and Rajasthani manuscripts
frequently referred to in Rajasthan, and other valuable historical materials such as ancient coins, copper-plate grants, genealogical charts,
old documents and paintings, were given to him by Maharana Bhim
Singh. Before the age of photography, his cousin, Captain Waugh
who accompanied him on his tours, made the priceless sketches that,
as copper plate prints, adorn the rst edition of the Annals.
Before being driven out of India at 41 by the Company resident
to the Mughal court in Delhi, David Ochterlony, Tod had played
an important part in mapping, conquering and, most important, culturally inscribing Indian space by daring and arduous feats of surveying, war, and intelligence. Forced to retire by Ochterlonys intrigues
and machinations and in any case suering from ill-health, Tod
returned to England in 1823.4 Most of the writing of Rajasthan was
Historiography and the Rajput Ideal) I trust that a revised version of this dissertation will soon be available. It will put Tod scholarship on a new plane. Other
sources for biographical information about Tod include his principal works: Annals
and Antiquities of Rajasthan (particularly William Crookes introduction to his London
1920 edition) and Travels in Western India (Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1971) whose
anonymously authored Memoir of the Author provides something of a biography. See also G. Smith (ed.), the Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1960; 1912
edition by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee); and Henry Cousens, The Late LieutenantColonel James Tod, Archeaological Survey of India (19071908).
4
Tod left India in broken health and defeated. Twelve years as a surveyor often
spent in camp . . . subject to the inclemencies of all weather under canvas contributed to . . . the very bad state of my health (R.H. Phillimore, Historical Records
of the Survey of India, Vol. II: 1800 to 1815 (Dehra Dun, 1950), p. 446). In 1822, at
RAJASTHAN
255
the age of 41, Tod had been forced to retire from East India Company service
and to leave India for England as a result of conicts with his administrative superior, Major-General David Ochterlony (1803, Resident at the Mughal emperors
court; victorious commander in wars in Mysore and Nepal and against the Marathas,
Gurkhas and Pindaris; 1818, Resident in Rajputana when he negotiated treaties
with several Rajput states; Resident again in Delhi when Tod was agent in Mewar).
Ochterloneys views, policies and actions epitomized the kind of activist interventionism that led in time to the mutiny and rebellion of 1857. Tod, by contrast,
anticipated the post-Mutiny policy of respecting the princes and relying on them
as loyal feudatories of the Crown. Ochterlony was a colorful and forceful gure
who played a major military and administrative role in extending Company power
in northern India and Nepal and whose career and despatches helped to shape
pre-1857 British perceptions of and attitudes toward India. Ochterlony, who lived
like a Nawab with a retinue of wives and attendants, thought he knew Indian character, languages and manners better than Tod. Having negotiated the 1818 treaties,
he found Tods objections to Company imposed nancial burden on Rajput states
unwarranted and insubordinate. Ochterlonys detractors charged that he constantly
interfered in the internal aairs of princely states, adding to the confusion. In 1825
Ochterlony chose to resign rather than suer a repudiation of his policy. His
papers give us a detailed account of the conict between Ochterlony and Tod
(N.K. Sinha and A.K. Das (eds.), Selections from the Ochterlony Papers 181825 in the
National Archives of India (Calcutta, 1964)). In the post-Mutiny India of direct rule,
Tods Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, rather than Ochterlonys despatches, shaped
perceptions, ideology and historiography.
5
In a private communication Dr. Rima Hooja, a prodigious scholar of Indian
and Rajasthani subjects, including a forthcoming study of James Tod, informs me
256
Tod also willy-nilly created more or less in his person the rst (British)
intelligence service in India, a service that proved decisive in making the Company and, via the Company, Britain the victors in the
contest with the Marathas to succeed the Mughals as the hegemonic
power on the Indian subcontinent. In this sense, Tod played a pivotal role in the military and political history of India.
Tod came to know the Marathas early on his career. In 1805, as
a 24 year old junior ocer, he was assigned to the escort of Graeme
Mercer, a friend of his uncle, Patrick Heatley and the Companys
on the basis of a letter in the Hardwicke Papers (Add 9868 of British Library
Western Mss Collection) signed by Tod to Col. Colin McKenzie dated February
19, 1821, that Tod extracted the Essence . . . of many works in prose and verse, in
all dialectsFrom the Deo Banee [the Sanskrit], so called by pre-eminencethe
language of the Gods, to the uncouth Basha, the Doric of Medpat or the honied
words of Brij. My tutor is an adept in every one. The Suruswuttiof which is the
Punjabi,the Magadi [Behar], Guzeratti &c &c, and I understand the Rangra and
blunder thro all.
6
Tod, Travels, p. xxiii.
RAJASTHAN
257
Envoy and Resident at the court of Daulat Rao Scindia, the Maratha
chief.7 For the next eight years he remained with the escort. In 1813,
the year before the onset of the Third Maratha War, Tod was promoted to Captain and put in charge of the escort. Throughout these
years personally and with the aid of paid assistants he studied and
surveyed the terrain, in time coining such geographic terms as
Rajasthan, Malwa, and Central India and becoming increasingly familiar with the outlook and habits of leading Maratha personalities. In 1815, the map he sent the Governor-General, Lord
Hastings, and his knowledge of the Marathas order-of-battle created crucial strategic advantages for the Companys forces. Tod provided plans for military operations and supervised an intelligence
department. The Maratha defeat in 1817 opened the way in 1818
to treaties of subordinate cooperation with several of the Rajput
kingdoms. Tod, now 36, was appointed Political Agent to the Western
Rajput States by the Governor-General.8 His momentous four years
in Mewar had begun.
Tods nal accomplishment was as a scholar-administrator. He
lived and worked at what he felt to be the periphery of the East
India Companys world in India. Although a member of the Asiatic
Society located in distant Calcutta, the seat of the East India Companys
Governor-General and his administration, he was suciently awed
by the scholar-administrator members resident there and suciently
unsure of how to present and interpret the massive amount of material
7
The Marquis of Wellesleys (Arthur Wellesley) victories in 1803 at Assaye over
the Maratha Peshwa, Baji Rao II and over Daulat Rao Sindhia, in the so-called
First Maratha War, led to the signing of the Treaty of Bassein. It gave the Company
eective control over the Maratha homeland by means, inter alia, of a military escort
being stationed at the Marathas moveable court. For summary treatment of the
First Maratha War and, more generally, the Maratha era see Surjit Mansingh,
Historical Dictionary of India (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 57; 2502. For summary treatments of the First, Second and Third Anglo-Maratha Wars and short accounts
of the Maratha chiefs involved in them (Balaji Baji Rao and Baji Rao II), see
Parshotam Mehra, Dictionary of Modern Indian History, 17071947 (New Delhi, 1985),
pp. 4314; 626, For an excellent analytic account of the Maratha era, see Stewart
Gordon, The Marathas: 16001815 (Cambridge, 1993).
8
Tod was put in charge of Mewar, Kotah, Bundi, Jaiselmer and Sirohi. Tods
dierences with David Ochterlony in Delhi and with other Company ocials led
in time to all these states, except Mewar, being withdrawn from his charge. When
Jaiselmer was withdrawn in 1822 and he was dishonored by having his escort
reduced, Tod resigned his post in Mewar in June and began his travels in western India prior to his departure for England from Bombay in February 1823.
258
he had gathered that he refrained from submitting his work for publication in Asiatic Researches much less beginning a general work on
Rajasthan.9 It was only after his return to England in 1823 and
becoming the rst Librarian of the newly formed Royal Asiatic Society
in 1824 that he began to publish articles based on the extensive
material he had gathered and on his views about Indias civilization.
Among the rst was an article in the rst volume of the Transactions
of the Royal Asiatic Society on ancient coins. O.P. Kejariwal credits Tod as being the rst person to have taken a scholarly interest
in ancient coins . . . His article . . . evoked wide interest. The dis-
9
Asiastic Researches, the journal of the Asiatic Society, was founded in January
1784, by Sir William Jones four months after his arrival in Calcutta. The journal
had the encouragement and support of Indias rst Governor-General, Warren
Hastings (Robert Clive had preceded Hastings but as Governor-General of Bengal
only). The rst volume of Asiatic Researches was published in 1789. Four more volumes appeared over the ten years that William Jones served as President of Asiatic
Society, each volume causing a successively great sensation in Europe ( John Keay,
India Discovered; The Recovery of a Lost Civilizaton (London, 2001), p. 27). In his 1821
letters to Col. Colin MacKenzie Tod mentioned that he was not sending anything
to the Asiatic Society of which I am an unworthy member; but dreading a critique it has lain quiet since the day written two years ago, and my enquiries are
unabated, but I have not a single essay on any one subject. . . . How or in what
manner shall I attempt to reply to your letter? How enter the interminable eld of
Hindoo antiquity? Whither will it lead me? Where can I leave o ? It is plunging
me into a labyrinth of my own: but I have provided no clue for my exit and I
may be left in the darkness of my own ideas without enlightening you. (British
Library, Add Mss 9868, F. 133, Letter of Tod to MacKenzie, Oudipoor 17 February
1821, and Add Mss 9868, F. 114, as quoted in Freitag, The Power which raised
them from Ruin, p. 43. Hastings was committed to Indian learning in part because
he thought he should govern with the approbation (not the same as consent) of
those he governed. He undertook measures to promote knowledge of the languages,
texts and customs of the people of India starting with the languages of the text the
scholar-administrators of the Asiatic Society were discovering, Persian and Sanskrit
and extending to vernacular languages such as Bengali and Urdu. Hastings himself could speak Urdu, Bengali and commanded some Persian. Keay glosses the
Hastings views this way: If British rule in India was to prosper and last, British
administrators must themselves become partly Indianized. They must learn the languages, study the customs. The government must work within existing institutions,
not try to impose a whole new set of Western ones. There must be intellectual
exchange, not a walkover; and if there were agrant abuses in Indian society they
must be reformed from within, not proscribed from without (Keay, India Discovered,
p. 23). Tod follows the Hastings view of British rule in India, a view diametrically
opposed to that advanced by James Mill and others. Mills 1830 rule in India, a
view diametrically opposed to that advanced by James Mill and other utilitarians.
Mills 1832 parliamentary testimony in anticipation of the Charter renewal in 1834
(to be characterized further below) articulates the alternative view while Tods testimony builds on Warren Hastings perspective.
RAJASTHAN
259
10
O.P. Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of Indias Past (New
Delhi, 1988). p. xx.
11
Keay, India Discovered, p. 87.
12
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979). Said modies his view and softens the structural determinism found in Orientalism in Culture and Empire.
13
Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Cambridge Mass., 1990).
260
tropes and epistemes, to be examined below, that shaped Tods thinking, choices and actions. One of the reasons Tod wrote Rajasthan in
the rst place and wrote it the way he did was his engagement with
what might be called the original and authentic Orientalists, the
persons associated with Sir William Jones and his protector, GovernorGeneral Warren Hastings. Did the stellar cast of scholar-administrators who populated the Asiatic Society14 and who created an
amazing body of Indological knowledge pursue knowledge because
they were pursuing power or because of their love of learning and
intellectual curiosity? Must we choose one or the other? Our reading of James Tod and of the other Asiatic Society Orientalists gives
considerable weight to love of learning and intellectual curiosity.
As a teen-age undergraduate at Oxford William Jones mastered
not only several European languages but also took up Arabic and
Persian, languages in his view of two great civilizations. Years later,
as he approached India by sea, he thought of those civilizations, one
to the north and one to the south of the route his ship was taking.
His trope was civilization. After he mastered Sanskrit in India he
declared it and its literature at least the equal of Greek and its literature. Like Tod, Jones and his Asiatic Society colleagues sought
for parallels between Indian, Greek and Roman civilizations. It was
an era that saw the world in terms of civilizations and that anticipated civilizational progress.15
Writing Rajasthan
We turn from Tod the man to Tod the author. What paradigms
and concepts, tropes and metaphors, assumptions and tacit knowledge, did he bring to the writing of the Annals? Why and how did
he write the Annals the way he did? We read Rajasthan not only as
a work of positive scholarship about history and ethnography and
legend and myth but also as a text which can be explicated as intel-
14
Such names as James Prinsep, Charles Wilkins, H.H. Wilson, H.T. Colebrooke.
See Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society and Keay, India Discovered.
15
For a more nuanced, detailed and footnoted account of our critique of orientalism, see Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Occidentalism and
Orientalism: Perspectives on Legal Pluralism, in Sally C. Humphries (ed.), Cultures
of Scholarship (Ann Arbor, 1997), pp. 21951.
RAJASTHAN
261
16
Critical readings from the earliest reviews until today have dealt with factual
mistakes with respect to lineages, dates, events, and with conceptual or theoretical mistakes such as, as in the case of Alfred Lyall, with too strongly discounting the clan or tribal aspect of Rajput society and rule in order to privilege the
feudal aspect. With the recent exception of Norbert Peabodys 1996 critique of
Ronald Indens reading in Imagining India (Oxford, 1990), they have not dealt with
tropes and analogies that shaped his conceptual imagination and narratives
(N. Peabody, Tods Rajasthan and the Boundaries of Imperial Rule in Nineteenthcentury India, Modern Asian Studies, 30,1 (1996)).
17
Tod draws upon Henry Hallams View of the State of Europe during the Middle
Ages, 2 vols (London, 1818). The only comprehensive intellectual-cum-biographical
study of Hallam known to us is Peter Clarks Henry Hallam (Boston, 1982). Clark
provides detailed bibliographical references to works by and about Hallam. He
reports inter alia that during Hallams lifetime there were eleven editions of the
Middle Ages. After Hallamss death in 1859 two more editions of the Middle Ages
were published in 1868 and 1872. In the United States the Middle Ages was even
more successful: four editions were published there in the 1889s and 1890s. In
France, Hallams work went through four editions and in Italy one. Clark tells us
that In his day (Hallam) was regarded as the doyen of English historians. . . . the
framework he used and the conclusions he reached were substantially those of his
successors. . . . Stubbs, Froude and Gardiner . . . because the Victorian historians
were working with the same terms of reference. Hallam saw himself as a philosophical historianin the tradition of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Thus Hallam
is an essential link between Hume and Stubbs . . . his work had an appeal to the
generation of 18301870, and helped in the making of the historical consciousness
of that generation . . . The Queen, Gladstone, and Disraeli all read (his works).
Apart from Clarks work, for Hallams life, including the Hallam familys relationship to Alfred Tennyson, see A.J. Byatts ctionalized account in Angles and Insects
(London, 1992). In Memorium (1850), the work that established Tennysons reputation, was written to remember Arthur Hallam, Henrys son, the anc of Tennysons
sister, whose youthful death struck an important chord in Romantic consciousness.
As we point out below, Tod celebrated youthful, heroic death. A searching critique
of Tods conception of feudalism can be found in Chapter One, Something Very
Like Feudalism, in Robert Sterns The Cat and the Lion; Jaipur State in the British Raj
(Leiden, 1988).
262
Tod then treats directly with the authors that shaped his world view:
I had abundant sources of intelligence to guide me in forming my
analogies: Montesquieu, Hume, Millar, Gibbon; but I sought only general resemblances and lineaments similar to those before me.18
He then reveals the decisive source for reading Rajasthan texts and
archives; oral and written bardic literature; and rituals and politics
of Mewar court societyin the light of medieval feudalism.
A more perfect source, because more familiar picture, has since appeared
[in 1818] by an author [here he footnotes Hallams Middle Ages],
who has drawn aside the veil of mystery which covered the subject,
owing to its being till then but imperfectly understood. I compared
the features of Rajpoot society with the nished picture of this eloquent writer, and shall be satised with having substantiated the claim
of these tribes to participation in a system, hitherto deemed to belong
exclusively to Europe. I am aware, of the danger of hypothesis, and
shall advance nothing that I do not accompany by incontestable proofs.19
18
For insightful and telling interpretations inter alia of Montesquieu, Millar and
Hume, see Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests; Political Arguments for
Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, 1997). For Gibbon see the introduction by
David Womersley in his recently edited republication of Edward Gibbon, The History
of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1994), Vol. I, pp. xicviii. Tod cites
Gibbons Miscellaneous Works, Vol. III.
19
These passages are from Lieut.-Col. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan
or, The Central and Western Rajpoot States of India, two volumes in one with a preface
by Douglas Sladen (London, 1914; reprinted in 1923 and 1950), Vol. I, pp. 1078.
RAJASTHAN
263
Scottish too was Sir Walter Scott, the herald of the medieval
revival . . . and the inventor of a ctitious sentimental national tradition . . .21 Scottish Enlightenment luminaries such as of David
Hume, Adam Smith, John Millar and Edward Gibbon, who was
for all intents and purposes . . . intellectually a Scot,22 shaped Tods
historical understanding, including his view of stages in the course
of realizing civilization.23 Starting with Waverly set in the Highlands
in 1814 and more or less ending with The Surgeons Daughter set in
20
The quote from Childe Harold is From Canto iii and is cited in Rajasthan, Vol.
1, p. 612. Tod cites Byron again in Vol. 2 (p. 510) when deploring the Companys
policy toward cultivation of opium, this execrable and demoralising plant. We
have saved Rajpootana, he writes, from political ruin; but the boon of mere existence will be valueless if we fail to restore the moral energies of her population;
for of this ne region and noble race we might say, as Byron does of Greece
Tis Greecebut living Greece no more! .
21
Martin Bernal, Black Athena (New Brunswick NY, 1990), Vol. 1, p. 291.
22
Herman, How the Scots, p. 226. Herman says of Gibbon although English (he)
modeled his work closely on the Scottish and Edinburgh historical school . . . One
of his closest friends was Adam Ferguson, but his other heroes were Hume and
Smith, whose new book, The Wealth of Nations, Gibbon called the most profound
and systematic treatise on the great objects of trade and revenue which had ever
been published in any age or century. When Hume wrote to Gibbon praising his
new history, Gibbon said the letter repaid the labour of ten years (pp. 2256).
23
These are the persons associated with the Scottish enlightenment that Tod
cites in Sketch of the feudal system in Rajasthan (Vol. I, pp. 10758). As has
been noted above, he relies in this section most heavily on Henry Hallam but
Montesquieu is also of considerable importance for Tods formulation.
264
India in 1827, Scott spread Romanticism by inventing the historical novel and with it the mass market for novels, a market which
English novelists such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William
Thackeray, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope and continental novelists such as Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert and Tolstoy were the beneciaries.
The historical novel was a new art form that paved the way for
Tods Rajasthan by imagining dierence and embracing the other.
An intriguing blend of imaginative fantasy and meticulous delity
to historical truth, it celebrated emotional loyalties rather than economic calculation [and] . . . heroic self-sacrice rather than rational
self-interest.24 In this way Scott introduced a key ingredient in modern consciousness, a sense of historical detachment, something that
Macaulay25 and other utilitarian and evangelical early Victorians
lacked but something that enabled Tod to imagine and, to an extent,
be the Rajput other.
The Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan was written and published for
a reading public whose tastes and sensibilities had been shaped by
several generations of romantic authors.26 Repudiating eighteenthcentury Enlightenment rationalism and market commercialism the
Romantics celebrated nature, sentiment, the picturesque and the
exotic and sometimes erotic other. Romantics like Byron, but also
Shelley, are particularly important because, in an era when East
India Company trade, conquest and politics was center stage in the
drama of English public life, the extravagant orientalism of their literary productions about India catered to a burgeoning public demand.27
In May 1813 Byron urged the Irish poet Tom Moore,
24
Herman, How the Scots, pp. 30810. For much of the detail and some of the
interpretation of Scottish Romanticism I am indebted to Hermans chapter on Scott
The last minstrel: Sir Walter Scott and the Highland revival (pp. 291319).
Herman argues that Scotts novels introduced several key components of modern
consciousness including cultural conict. History is presented as a series of culture wars: Frank versus Saracen (in The Talisman), Jew versus Christian (in Ivanhoe),
Norman versus Saxon, Scotsman versus Englishman, Lowlander versus Highlander,
Presbyterian versus Episcopalian . . . Which side is superior, and which deserves to
lose, is never fully resolved. (p. 310)
25
Herman, How the Scots, p. 310.
26
For example Edmund Burke, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Sir Walter
Scott, Lord Byron; Edward Gibbon.
27
See Nigel Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge,
1993).
RAJASTHAN
265
Tods romanticism in Rajasthan emerged in the shadow of a struggle over British policy in India. The struggle took the form of a
28
266
31
Sinha and Das Gupta (eds.), Ochterlony Papers (18181825). About one third of
230 Rajputana Residency Records printed in this volume present the voice and
views of Tod or Ochterlony. Like the parliamentary clash between James Mill and
James Tod, these documents reveal profound ideological and policy dierences
between the two men involved.
32
James Mill, Testimony to Parliament dated 16 February, 1832, Reports from
Committees, Session 6. December 183116 August 1832, in Minutes of Evidence taken
before the Select Committee on the Aairs of the East India Company, VI: Political or Foreign,
Vols VII, XIV (London: House of Commons, Parliament of England, 1832), pp.
310; and James Tod. Testimony to Parliament, Reports from Committees, Session
6 December 183116 August 1832, Appendix 13. Minutes of Evidence taken before the
Select Committee on the Aairs of the East India Company, VI: Political or Foreign, Vols VII,
XIV (London: House of Commons, Parliament of England, 1832), pp. 12235.
RAJASTHAN
267
33
Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; A Study in Nineteenth Liberal Thought
(Chicago, 1999). Mehta contrasts Burkes commitment to the naturalness of dierence
with Lockes commitment to the naturalness of uniformity. Burke, he tells us,
reected with great seriousness on the situation in which the exercise of power
and authority was implicated with considerations of cultural and racial diversity,
contrasting civilizational unities, the absence of . . . consensual government, and alternative forms of political identity and legitimacy. (pp. 13455) If dierence was all
for Burke, if persons were always and inevitably marked, for the liberal Locke,
sameness was all. Human nature was the same everywhere and always. Locke articulates liberal universalism from which . . . claims can be made because they
derive from certain characteristics that are common to all human being. (pp. 512).
268
34
Michael Herzfeld opens his Anthropology through the Looking Glass: Critical Ethnography
in the Margins of Europe (Cambridge, 1987; 1989) with the following sentence: Ancient
Greece is the idealized spiritual and intellectual ancestor of Europe (p. 1). For
views of this large and contested interpretation see his Ours Once and More: Folklore,
Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (Texas, 1982), in particular Chapter 1, Past
glories, present politics (pp. 323), as well as Chapter 1, Romanticism and
Hellenism: burdens of otherness in his Anthropology through the Looking Glass (pp. 127).
More than any other person, Adamantios Koraes (17481833) invented the imagined community of Hellenic Greeks. Inter alia he aroused Jeersons interest in the
cause of Greek liberty.
35
Leask, British Romantic Writers.
36
Preface to Percy B. Shelly, Hellas (1821).
37
Peabody refers to The Rajput Nation and discusses The nation in early
RAJASTHAN
269
nineteenth-century thought and Imperialism, nationalism, and the social construction of dierence. According to Peabody . . . Tods notion of the nation was
based on dierentiation of insider from outsider, or native from foreigner, categories whose context dependency makes them classic examples of group shifters
(Peabody, Tods Rajasthan, pp. 20411; the reference to Bentinck is at p. 209).
38
In addition to the essay entitled Greece the essays are entitled The Periodical
Literature of the Nineteenth Century, Historical Essay on the Origin, Progress,
and Probable Results of the Sovereignty of the English in India, On the Education
of Youth for Civil Oces in India, and Proposal for Introducing into England
the Practice of Burning the Dead.
270
39
An extensive and detailed account of Buckinghams conict with the East India
Company, particularly with the acting Governor-General John Adam, was published in January 1824, in the rst volume and number of The Oriental Herald under
the title Appeal of a Governor-General to Public Opinion in India which is, in
fact, Buckinghams 71 page answer to John Adams Statement of Facts connected
with the Removal from India of Mr. Buckingham, Late Editor of the Calcutta Journal.
(pp. 677). The ideological and policy battle between Tod and Ochterlony can be
followed in detail in Sinha and Das Gupta, Selections from Ochterlony Papers.
40
Being a Series of Letters and Other Documents on the Greek Revolution, written during a
Visit to that Country (London, 1824).
RAJASTHAN
271
sitionist views about Company rule in India and the importance and
value of public opinion and of national liberty. They also shared
ties to Col. Leicester Stanhope, whose book about his experiences
in Greece was reviewed in the Greece essay. We know, for example, from army-lists for the Third Anglo-Maratha War, a war, as
we have seen, in which Tods intelligence operation played a vital
role, that the Cavalry Brigade of the Gujarat Division of the army
of the Deccan was commanded by Lt. Col. The Honble L. Stanhope.
It seems highly probable that Tod and Stanhope knew each other
in India, a relationship which supports the inference that Tod wrote
the Greece essay reviewing Stanhopes book.
It is also possible that James Silk Buckingham, a prolic writer
and a intrepid editor, wrote some or all of the essays. Whether Tod
or Buckingham wrote some or all of them, we feel condent that
the essay on Greece provides strong evidence of Tods deep knowledge of and identication with the 1821 Hellenic Greek rebellion
against Ottoman rule. Here is some of the language from the opening paragraphs of that essay:
The glorious revolutions of Greece has strongly attracted the attention
of all liberal men, to whom it had long appeared surprising that that
classic land, the very birth-place and cradle of liberty, should have
remained during so many centuries under the yoke of foreign tyrants . . .
in every corner of Europe, this glorious result of the struggle excited
the warmest admiration, and in almost every country the spirit of the
people was roused to participation in so noble a cause . . . In Switzerland,
in Germany, and even in Russia, committees have been organized to
assist in the regeneration of Grecian liberty, and a portion at least of
the English people followed speedily the example which had been set
before them by others. Assisted by the contributions of this part of the
British public, the Greek Committee of London, at the head of which
were many noble and respected names, exerted itself with success in
forwarding the progress of Grecian liberty and independence. . . . [The
Honorable Colonel Leicester Stanhope] oered his services to proceed
to Greece as agent of the Committee . . . and he soon departed from
London with full powers . . . to act, on his arrival in Greece, in conjunction with Lord Byron for the advancement of the cause in which
they had both so zealously embarked.
272
Reading Rajasthan
In the naturalized categories of ocial Raj ethnography, an ethnography that Princely India came to share, Rajasthans kingdoms were
ruled by Rajputs. The term Rajput encompassed both kshatriya and
aristocratic status, both the warrior-rule vara of Indias ancient texts41
and the landed nobility and gentry familiar to English discourse.
British discourse about caste conated not only jti and vara but
also culture and biology; genetic codes determined character and
status.42 Jats were by nature cultivators; Rajputs by nature rulers and
warriors. In nineteenth-century readings, to be a Rajput was a condition outside history, essential and timeless.
From at least Mughal times Rajput identity has been shaped by
the oral and written panegyrics of court bards. Ironically, in the late
nineteenth century, Rajasthans paramount bardic authority had
become Colonel James Tods Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Published
in 1829 and 1832, his two volumes had become not only the authoritative version of bardic literature but also the dominant historiog-
41
The social ideology of varna appears in the g Veda, The Laws of Manu and
other brahmanical texts and was accepted until recently as authoritative by Indologists
from Max Mller to Max Weber to Louis Dumont. Vara social ideology depicted
caste in terms of brahmans (priests), kshatriyas (warrior rulers), vaishyas (merchants), shudras (manual workers, including peasants and artisans) and untouchables
(mlecchas or foreigners; conquered people or Dasas; those outside the caste system
including latter day unclean or impure untouchables whom the British, and
after independence, the Government of India, designated scheduled castes). The
origin myth from the g Veda speaks of the Sacrice of the Cosmic Man; brahmans issued from his mouth, kshatriyas from his arms; vaishyas from his thighs and
shudras from his feet. Brahmans, kshatriyas and vaishyas were twice born, i.e.
taught sacred knowledge, they donned a sacred thread at puberty signifying their
spiritual rebirth. Recent scholarship has denaturalized vara and caste, depicting
them as historically constructed and subject to continuous change. See, for example, Romila Thapar, Ancient Indian Social History; Some Interpretations (New Delhi, 1978);
our Modernity of Tradition (Chicago, 1967); and Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown,
Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge, 1987).
42
For an elaboration of British views of caste in the context of its transformations see our Modernity of Tradition, pp. 15154.
RAJASTHAN
273
raphy for Raj and Princely India. As Tods reputation and standing
grew in the second half of the nineteenth century, it became dicult
to distinguish the local bardic traditions from the import.
After 1857, in the post-mutiny and rebellion world of direct rule
in British India and paramountcy in Princely India, Tods Rajasthan
dominated in quite dierent ways both Raj and Indian nationalist
historiography. First of all, Tods historiography not only reected
but also contributed to a burgeoning feudal medievalism and to a
revival of classical Hellenism that gripped Raj consciousness and
practice in the second half of the nineteenth century.43 For the postMutiny Raj in need of an ideology to legitimate direct rule, Tods
account of Rajputanas ancient dynasties, feudal kingdoms and chivalric honor fuelled the construction of the princes as loyal vassals of
the crown. In 1876, for example, Disraeli agreed with Queen Victorias
controversial request to be styled Empress of India.44 Lord Lytton,
the viceroy, used the momentous occasion to orchestrate a Mughal
style durbar at Delhi in January 1877. Victoria was declared Empress
of India, Indias princes, not least among them Rajput rulers, acknowledged her rule and declared their loyalty. The princes in turn were
accorded pride of place in a new imperial cosmology that recognized them as Indias natural leaders, as Lord Curzon called them.
The princes loyalty and deference to the British crown in the person of Queen Victoria were counted on to legitimize, support and
secure British rule in India. Tod would no doubt have disapproved
of this culmination because it made clear that Rajput rulers had
become what his hopes and policy were directed to avoid, dependents and subordinates of the British. At the same time he would
43
See Florence S. Boos (ed.), History and Communalism: Essay in Victorian Medievalism
(New York, 1992). Boos herself writes that the attraction of medievalism arose from
a sense of the medieval as alternative culture . . . alternative both to contemporary
capitalist and imperialist realpolitics, and to the unrealities of their conventional classical education . . . (p. 13). For Tod, writing well before the turn of the century,
the classical had yet to lose its charm.
44
For an account of Victorias keenness about being made Empress of India see
Stanley Weintraub, Victoria; An Intimate Biography (New York, 1987), pp. 41320. The
Queen, Weintraub writes, was anxious about her dignity. The unication of
Germany under Prussia had made her daughter, Vicky, a future Empress. When
crowned, Vicky might, in the absence of Parliamentary action, have precedence
over her. Disraeli responded to the Queens request by shepherding an ocial titles
bill through Parliament (pp. 4134).
274
45
For the historical circumstances and moral and psychological grounding of
British racial ideology about martial and non-martial races, see our The Modernity
of Tradition, pp. 1657: Within twenty years of the deliberate exclusion of United
Province brahmans from the Bengal Army because of their leading role in the rebellion of 1857, the idea that brahmans lacked ghting qualities had become prevailing opinion . . . in English minds at the end of the century, the distinction (between
martial and non-martial) was stressed as much for its instrumental utility in the
imperialist theory as for its academic interest as a description of caste or regional
character. The martial races for the most part adhered to the British raj, not
because they were martial . . . but for political considerations, the Rajputs because
they were the princes of states whose autonomy was threatened by a self governing India, the Muslims because they feared a Hindu majority in independent India . . .
Those described as the non-martial races produced nationalism.
46
See Chapter XIV. The martial classes of Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour:
An Account of the Indian Army, its Ocers and Men (London, 1986), pp. 34161, particularly 2: Lord Roberts and his views, pp. 34550.
47
MacMunn averred: The mass of the people of India have neither martial
aptitude nor physical courage. Of Indias 350 million people only 35 million
qualied as martial races and of these only 3 million were males between 20 and
35 years of age. Mason adds that the idea that some people will make soldiers
and some will not is of course much older than the British. It is implicit in the
Hindu caste system; no raja would have the money-lender or the trader castes to
bear arms. But it was the British, after the Mutiny, step by step, who formulated
and codied the principle, turning what had been a matter of practical choice into
a dogma proclaimed with theological rigour. (Mason, Honour, pp. 3489)
RAJASTHAN
275
48
For Jones view see Thomas R. Trautman, Aryans and British India (New Delhi,
1997), Chapter Two, The Mosaic Ethnology of Asiatick Jones, pp. 2861.
49
Although Todand othersin the 1820s already spoke of a potential Russian
threat to India, it was Rudyard Kiplings Kim that introduced the English speaking
world to the metaphor of the Great Game in Asia. Tod argued for a BritishRajput alliance in part to have the strength on the subcontinent to face Russian
ambitions. For the state of play after the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
see Lloyd I. Rudolph, The Great Game in Asia: Revisited and Revised, Crossroads:
An International Socio-Political Journal, 16 (1985). For an overview see Peter Hopkirk,
The Great Game; On Secret Service in High Asia (London, 1990).
50
Rajput history and images inuenced the thinking and writing of eminent
Bengalis including Henry Louis DeRozio, Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Rabindranath
Tagore (see his Kathu-o-Kahini for several Rajput poems, including one expressing
his disillusionment after actually visiting Rajasthan in the late 1930s. My thanks to
the late Sujit Mukherjee for calling this poem to my attention and doing a rough
translation for me. General works on the inuence of Rajput history and legend
on nationalist consciousness, starting with consciousness in Bengal, include Papia
Chakrabarty, Hindu Response to Nationalist Ferment: Bengal 19091935 (Calcutta, 1992);
Amrita Lal De, The Students History of Rajpootana, being an Account of the Princes of
Rajpootana from the Earliest Ages to the Modern Times (Calcutta, 1889); Dalia Ray, The
Bengal Revolutionaries and Freedom Movement (New Delhi, 1990); Ashis Sanyal, Contributions
of Bengali Writers to National Freedom Movement (Calcutta, 1989). I am indebted to Jason
Freitags The Power which raised them from Ruin for some of these references.
276
51
RAJASTHAN
277
Ruling Princes, Chiefs and Leading Personages (Calcutta, 1931. This is the sixth edition
of a work projected in 1890 by Colonel G.H. Trevor, C.S.I., Agent to the GovernorGeneral for Rajputana . . . and put together by C.S. Bayley, C.S., then Political
Agent, Bikaner. Some of the account in the historical introduction was written as
early as 1879.
56
Sir Walter Lawrence, The India we served (London, 1928), p. 56. Here we see
how Rajput took on gentlemanly overtones. For narratives, histories and tropes
of gentleman, see Rupert Wilkinson, Gentlemanly Power (New York, 1964).
57
Norman Zieglers study of the Khyt of Nainsi, a seventeenth-century Jodhpur
administrator, shows how Mughal administrative categories and practices were assimilated into Rajput political ideas and practices. It also suggests the creation of a
more complex and hierarchical status order on analogies with Mughal court society. Zieglers study of fteenth-century Rajput folksongs and tales is striking for the
absence in them of the orid literary and cultural embellishments of the later bardic
accounts, and suggests that Kols characterizations of Rajputs, of which more
below, as plain ghting men of diverse origins may apply to Rajputs in Rajputana
as well as in other parts of North India (The Seventeenth Century Chronicles of
Marvara: A Study in the Evolution and use of Oral Traditions in Western India,
History in Africa, 3 (1976); Marvari Historical Chronicles: Sources for the Social
and Cultural History of Rajasthan, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 13
(1976)). Nicholas Dirks, in his The Hollow Crown, argues that the political processes
associated with kingship rather than canonical texts or brahmanic understandings
determined social preference and standing, including caste identity and privileges.
South Indian kings, he argues, used symbolic and material resources under their
control to reshape or constitute status orders and castes.
278
58
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the top layer of Rajputs (in
Rajputana), encouraged by the openings presented by the Mughal state and helped
by the expertise of their bards, tended to . . . articulate new norms of Rajput behavior. Bards had always encouraged their Rajput employers to assume aristocratic
self-images closely linked with myths of origin that established their status as kshatriyas and traced back their genealogies to, for instance, the great dynasties of
ancient Indian history. . . . The tendency to interpret Rajput history in genealogical terms was later inherited by Tod and other British administrators . . . . something like a new Rajput Great Tradition emerged (in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries) which could recognize little else than unilineal kin bodies as the elements
of which genuine Rajput history ought to be made up. Dirk H.A. Kol, Naukar,
Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 14501850
(Cambridge, 1990), pp. 7273). Kol sees the original Rajputs as an open status
group in which, as late as the nineteenth century, included errant soldier, migrant
labourer, or pack-animal trader. This interpretation is not accepted by many contemporary Rajputs who hold that Rajputs are descended from an historical Ram
or from his sons. For a debate about Rajput status a generation ago, see Rushton
Coulborn (ed.), Feudalism in History (Princeton NJ, 1956) and the debate that followed about feudalism as a universal category. For example did it exist as a
stage of development in India and Japan? The debate at that time about whether
Rajputs in India were a feudal status category or class was innocent of the understanding suggested here that Tod, who established the term for India, used Henry
Hallams reading of medieval feudalism as the core of his historiographical construction of feudalism in India.
59
Aspects of these perceptions and attitudes can be gleaned from E.M. Forsters
Passage to India and Paul Scotts four volume The Jewel in the Crown. Philip Woodrus
The Men who ruled India, 2 vols (London, 19534) traces the evolution of East India
Company and Indian Civil Service (ICS) mentalities. Clive Deweys recent study
shows the complexity of cultural provenance, motive and intention among several
prominent late nineteenth-century ICS ocers (C. Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The
Mind of the Indian Civil Servant (London and Rio Grande, 1993)).
RAJASTHAN
279
Indeed, during the great revolt in 1857 against British rule most
of Rajputanas princes sided with the British.60 Their help in a time
of peril ushered in an era of mutual appreciation and support that
lasted to independence in 1947. After 1857, the Raj relied increasingly on Princely India as a source of legitimacy and political support. The princes in turn came to rely on British recognition and
power to legitimize and secure their rule.
60
In the opening decades of the nineteenth century, the Company ended lingering Maratha pretensions to imperial status, defeated and pacied the Pindaris,
and gradually closed the peasant based military labor market by conning military
recruitment to high caste Hindus. As a result, according to Dirk Kol, The
Company largely achieved the demilitarisation . . . of politics at the regional level.
By 1850, British North India was almost totally demilitarised . . . (Kol, Naukar,
Rajput and Sepoy, p. 188). After the bloody and almost successful revolt in 1857 by
alienated sepoys, talukdars and princes, a Government of India Act had replaced
East India Company with Crown rule. A viceroy representing the British Queen
now stood in the place of the Mughal Emperor as the hegemonic power on the
Indian subcontinent. In time, the treaties became an important source for the doctrine of paramountcy. See S.N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven (New Delhi, 1957) and
Ainslee T. Embree (ed.), India in 1857: The Revolt Against Foreign Rule (Delhi, 1987).
61
See Introduction, Part 1. Provenance: Making a Self at the Jodhpur Court,
in Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph with Mohan Singh Kanota,
Reversing the Gaze; Amar Singhs Diary, A Colonial Subjects Narrative of Imperial India (New
Delhi, 2000), pp. 115.
280
62
See our essay, Rajputana Under British Paramountcy; The Failure of Indirect
Rule, in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Essays on Rajputana (New
Delhi, 1984), pp. 337. See also Part VI Princely Courts in Imperial Space, of
our Reversing the Gaze, pp. 467556. For the integration of the princely states see
RAJASTHAN
281
inter alia V.P. Menon, Story of the Integration of the Princely States (New Delhi, 1955)
and The Transfer of Power (New Delhi, 1957).
63
See our essay, The Political Modernization of an Indian Feudal Order: An
Analysis of Rajput Adaptation in Rajathan in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne
Hoeber Rudolph, Essays on Rajputana, pp. 3878.
282
feudal society and ideology, of the image of heroism and honor summoned up by mounted warriors defending great castles from invading foes? Tods Rajasthan is being replicated for tourists. More tourists
visit Rajasthan than any other state. Its arts and crafts; its folk culture and performance arts; its fairs and fetes; its colorful clothing,
turbans and jewelry; its camels and elephants; all contribute to
Rajasthans appeal. Topping all Rajasthans attraction is its Rajput
heritage, a heritage of princes and noblemen, their palaces and forts,
castles and mansions.
Mohan Singh Kanota, our friend and co-author, was instrumental in organizing a Heritage Hotel association among Rajput princes
and noblemen. The associations helps Rajputs with palaces, forts and
castles to preserve their patrimony while earning an income. They
do so by reproducing for tourists from at home and abroad versions
of Tods Rajasthan. A thin and easily breached line separates preservation and its eort to be authentic and replication epitomized by
theme parks, a form of representation that has spread from America
to Europe and Japan.64 The preservation of the great forts at Chitor,
Kumbalghar, Jodhpur, Jaiselmer and Amber and of hundreds of
lesser forts, castles, palaces and havels gives us hope that something
of Tods Rajasthan, itself a partially imagined place, can help
Rajasthanis and those who visit Rajasthan to participate in the production and reproduction of Rajasthan.
64
For a discussion on authenticity in the context of identity and replication, see
our 2002 Ryerson Lecure at the University of Chicago, Engaging Subjective
Knowledge: Narratives of and by the Self in the Amar Singh Diary, The University
of Chicago Record, 36,4 (2002).
With the inevitability of the weather or the law of gravitation, modernity has been invading human lives for the last three centuries.
Modernity poses a great challenge: its history can be traced, its origins can be dug out of the rubble of time, its turns and twists can
be charted, its material manifestations can be seen everywhere. But
the informing idea behind this outward manifestation of modernity
often eludes the perceiver. Modernity is more than a social phenomenon or an historical process. It is the grand utopia of an everreceding future. Taking stock of history reveals the dierent routes
modernity has taken. This exercise reveals that modernity may be
of European origin, that it is far from widely accepted and that it
incarnates or reincarnates in dierent world civilisations, including
the Indian. The ultimate purpose of modernity depends on human
will, internalised values and conscious eort. Modernity, in the last
analysis, is a human revolt against fate, chance, unpredictability and
lack of control over ones destiny. What makes modernity attractive
is the chances it promises of genuine human progress and happiness.
284
285
3
Twentieth-century dictators often invoked ideas associated with modernity such
as freedom, literacy, general education, democratic centralism etc. to conceal their real motives of striving after absolute power. Recent left-wing issues like
deep ecology and alternative cultures are sometimes being infected by extreme rightist and downright Neo-Nazi inuences. See: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitlers Priestess:
Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 22532.
4
Max Weber had already remarked in his famous study on Protestantism and
the Capitalist Ethic: The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to
do so. Moreover, the economic order is bound to . . . machine production which
today determine the lives of all individuals who are born into this mechanism . . .
with irresistible force (Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Translated by Talcott Parsons. With an introduction by Anthony Giddens (London and New
York, 2001), p. 123.
286
5
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age
(Cambridge, 1994), pp. 145.
6
Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 146.
7
Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 19. Trust is more than a minimal ethical
demand in modernity. Fukuyama argues the importance of trust in dierent life situations at great length in his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity
(New York, 1995). He holds that moral virtues such as trust are the dynamics
behind economic success and prosperity in any given society. Societies that lack
trust and the related virtues are also economically and socially not well o. Fukuyama
resurrects the famous Weber thesis about Protestantism but widens and secularises
its application far beyond Protestantism itself.
287
8
9
10
11
12
Giddens,
Giddens,
Giddens,
Giddens,
Giddens,
Modernity
Modernity
Modernity
Modernity
Modernity
and
and
and
and
and
Self-Identity,
Self-Identity,
Self-Identity,
Self-Identity,
Self-Identity,
288
13
289
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Zygmunt
Bauman,
Bauman,
Bauman,
Bauman,
Bauman,
Bauman,
Bauman,
290
selshness of the rich and the resourceful.22 In Baumans view, postmodernism as the newest fashion thrives on self-centredness and
indierence to the condition of the non-privileged. This is possible
because under postmodernity human concerns have become privatised; the most seminal of privatizations was that of human problems and the responsibility for their resolution. So instead of concerned
citizens, in the postmodern world we are left with seduced and privileged consumers and those that have no means to consume. Obviously
the latter owe their sorry state to themselves. Postmodernity eectively
desocialized the ills of society and translated social injustice as individual ineptitude or neglect.23 Privatisation and consumerism create
consumer-freedom for the rich. The driving force behind all this is
the free market.24
Consumer freedom means orientation of life towards market-approved
commodities and thereby precludes one crucial freedom: freedom from
the market . . . Above all consumer freedom succesfully deects aspirations of human liberty from communal aairs and the management
of collective life.25
22
291
27
292
30
Anthony D. King, The Times and Spaces of Modernity (or who needs postmodernism?) in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global
Modernities (London and New Delhi, 1995), p. 110.
31
King, The Times and Spaces, p. 111.
32
King, The Times and Spaces, p. 114.
33
King, The Times and Spaces, pp. 1201.
34
Gran Therborn, Route to/through Modernity, in Mike Featherstone, Scott
Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities (London and New Delhi, 1995),
pp. 1317.
293
35
36
294
Modernity and ethics
37
38
39
40
295
Cultural Studies
For an ethical perspective on modernity, which also takes note of
individual persons, we can turn to a recent new discipline, Cultural
Studies. Emerging from the study of English literature, sociology of
culture and committed British socialism in the sixties, Cultural Studies brings us closer to the lives of human beings and their daily concerns. Some of its practitioners claimed that Cultural Studies is of
course, the study of culture, or, more particularly, the study of contemporary culture. Cultural Studies concentrate on subjectivity,
which means that it studies culture in relation to individual lives,
breaking with social scientic positivism.41 But this approach roams
about in the realms of history and ethics as well. Values do play a
role in the motivation behind doing Cultural Studies. Fred Inglis in
his overview of Cultural Studies claims his book is . . . a mixture
of secular sermon, intellectual pilgrimage . . . and . . . strenuous aspiration towards entirely serious and syncretic thoughts.42 Protagonists
of Cultural Studies bear witness to values that include democracy,
equality, fullment, freedom. These values are trans-class and
seless. They are our common heritage and the ground in which
our common humanity is rooted. They arm solidarity as against
competition.43 Inglis wants Cultural Studies militants to practice
three special virtues: keenness of spontaneity, earnest serenity of
seriousness and solidarity. The political inspiration behind this
solidarity and behind Cultural Studies as a whole Inglis records on
the same page:
Solidarity is the rst value of socialism and although socialism is in
pretty bad cas . . . Cultural Studies started from socialisms old parabolas, its spirals of love and hope as well as of hatred and vengefulness.
The political commitment is inscribed in the values and conceptual
structures of all descriptions of the eld, and any revisions will have
to keep faith with that solidarity, its realm and fount of value, or else
ditch the whole project and begin again.44
As an intellectual inquiry in all the mansions of the . . . human sciences, cultural studies should try to balance the claims of life in
41
42
43
44
296
45
297
298
After the fall of the Berlin Wall Fukuyamas End of History has
not arrived yet, nor has Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations
begun beyond the usual clashes of commercial and geo-strategic interests of the West versus the rest. What we do witness is a steep rise
in authoritarian politics, ranging from extremely violent manifestations of Islamic fundamentalism, to equally violent Hindu revivalism, the come-back of the extreme right in Europe and the coercive
policies of US-led globalisation. But this rise in extremist politics
does not indicate a clash of civilisations, rather a clash of authoritarian (national) interests. Nevertheless, one should make no mistakes
about the dangers they are posing for modernity, democracy and
human rights. There is apparently little cause for idealism these days.
Marxism seems to have outlived itself after numerous metamorphoses:
from the Workers International and nascent social-democracy in the
late nineteenth century, via Leninist-Stalinist adaptations to vaguely
postmodernist political correctness.
Thus for our idealism we are left with the tradition of radical liberty and social justice (which moved around the fringes of Marxist
orthodoxy) has never fully allied itself with authoritarian forms of
government.48 Perhaps from this radical perspective it is possible to
analyse and theorise idealistic but viable utopias of modernity. We
could call this radical emancipatory modernity. The central issue
here is the dierence between a modernity that is truly emancipatory and all the other socio-political utopias that end in authoritarianism, because they were based on control and a purely instrumental
governmental view of human beings that make up society. The other
problem is that the authoritarian mindset inherited from pre-Enlightenment, feudal times, were never fully shaken o. It is precisely
because of their authoritarianism that many utopias of modernity
have come in for severe criticism and were rightfully rejected. Authoritarianism and not abstract economics is the sickness of contemporary political utopias. Thus radical emancipatory concerns could be
regarded as the core and ideal of modernity for the future. One of
48
During the Civil War in Spain, around 1936, the anarchists, who were a force
to be reckoned with, joined the governments of Catalonia and Madrid. The anarchist ministers were drawn from the Confederacin Nacional del Trabajo and the
Federacin Anarquista Ibrica. See George Woodcock, Anarchism (Harmondsworth
Middlesex, 1977), pp. 36870.
299
its most important global manifestations nowadays is the deep concern for human rights. Is radical emancipatory modernity only a
typically Western concern?
49
300
nationalism is, essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on
society, where previously low cultures had taken up the lives . . . of the
population. It means that generalized diusion of a school-mediated,
academy-supervised idiom, codied for the requirements of reasonably
precise bureaucratic and technological communication. It is the establishment of an anonymous, impersonal society, with mutually substitutable atomized individuals, held together . . . by a shared culture of
this kind . . .50
Modern education and shared high culture are stimulated by one great
motive force, the motive force of modernity par excellence, modern
rationalised industrialism, because it is modern industrial society alone
that requires for its smooth functioning universal literacy and a high
level of numerical, technical and general sophistication.51
Gellners important contribution to the investigation of the origins
and quasi omnipresence of nationalism in the modern world (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), is the fact that he convincingly demonstrates the necessary links between industrialisation and nationalism.
For it is modern calculating and rational industrialisation especially
which needs for its full blossoming compact, culturally homogeneous territorial nation-states.52 Gellner is, however, mainly thinking
of Europe as the role model for the rest of the world. In colonial
empires the function of indigenous nationalism is somewhat dierent.
But it has motivated liberation-movements and struggles for freedom. In this respect only, nationalism is a form of emancipatory
modernity.53
50
301
Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self
(New Delhi, 1994). The rst two authors are prominent exponents of the Subaltern
Studies approach to the writing of Indian history.
55
Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought; and Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments:
Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, New Jersey, 1993).
56
Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought, p. 30.
57
Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, p. xi.
302
58
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London and New York, 1993), p. 6.
59
Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 3742.
60
Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, p. 6.
303
61
304
of the word. The same logic of modernity . . . led . . . to the discovery that imperialism was illegitimate. Modernity entailed both
the burden of reason and desire for power, as well as dreams
of freedom and the resistance to power. A sense of attachment
to the past determines the colour of Indian modernity; the desire to
be modern makes the Indians transpose their desire to be independent and creative on to their past. In spite of its desire for
power and control, modernity also is the rst social philosophy
which conjures up, in the minds of the most ordinary people, dreams
of independence and self-rule. Modernity leads to the desire for
autonomy and consequently to resistance of power. In the end,
Chatterjee asserts, there are two intellectual arenas of modernity:
a Western one claiming to be the universal and the national
aspiring to be dierent.63 One could seriously question this Western
universal claim. Claims to universality were made by most world
religions, not in the least Indian Buddhism and Hinduism which
travelled over the whole of East Asia and comfortably settled there.
It is up to sensitive Indian intellectuals to show the universality of
Indian cultural productions of the past and the present.
Indian indigenous modernity emerging in the early nineteenth
century, was itself by no means a homogeneous phenomenon. The
space of Indian modernity was lled with a number of adjacent plots
(of dierence): Hindu religious reforms, Indian philosophy of modernity, cultural nationalism, Indian linguistics and history-writing,
modern vernacular literature, experiments with national education,
Indian print-capitalism, building of Indian organisations. Within and
between these plots inuential Indian writers and theorists moved
about. Their writings told the story of Indian modernness, the new
cultural and religious ideals Indians were supposed to adopt, the stories and symbols by which Indians could imagine the Indian nation
in the making, and nally the possible roads to resist the empire.
Around the beginning of the twentieth century these stories of modernity and Indian nation-hood transformed some sensitive Indians into
hardened ghters for national freedom.64 They showed how to assert
control over ones own national destiny. The most radical ones among
63
Partha Chatterjee, A Possible India: Essays in Political Criticism (New Delhi, 1998),
pp. 27985.
64
Once more we should emphasise here the relative historiographical neglect of
the militant aspects of the Freedom Struggle.
305
them strove for total separation from the British Empire. The believed
in and worked for emancipation not only from British tutelage, but
also struggled for the upliftment of the Indian population from the
oppressions of the past. The major protagonists of this radical antiimperial nationalism regarded themselves as modernisers and educators. The sought to inculcate a sense of self-worth and capability
for improvement in the minds of the Indian public.
It is in the writings and acts of self-sacrice of these freedom
ghters that we ought to look for the contours and ideals of Indian
emancipatory modernity, a modernity that is yet unrealised. In other
words, we are looking at the group of nationalists that after the split
in the Congress at Surat in 1908 were designated as extremists.
We should not fully agree with Chatterjees pessimism about Indians
being perpetual consumers of a modernity that is actually of Western
origin. The Indian freedom movement oers many examples of where
Indians were not consumers of Western modernity but creators of
indigenous modernity.
What should worry us at this juncture is the weakness or wholesale retreat of modernity and the return of ancient rgime authoritarianisms in a new garb. At present this seems to be a worldwide
process. In South Asia it manifests itself primarily in Hindu rightist
extremism in India and Islamist radicalism in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Hindu and the Islamic extreme right mirror each other. They
have much in common, but at the same time are at each others
throats. The rst victims of these elitist bully movements are the economically weakest sections of society. The higher echelons of Indian,
Pakistani and Bangladeshi society will be cowed into submission with
the passage of time, or so runs the expectation of the rightist extremists. The rise and apparent success of the extreme right in South
Asia is a poisonous hangover from the colonial era. The mentality
of rule without the need for popular support or consent characterised
the British Raj.65 This semi-feudal mentality has lingered on as a
ready-made elitist model to follow in perpetuity. The future of South
Asian modernity depends on the continuous struggle against these
authoritarian tendencies. Indian modernity needs to be fostered and
protected at all cost.
65
See the penetrating analysis of colonial governance by Ranajit Guha in Dominance
without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (New Delhi, 1998).
Introduction1
The on-going information revolution is supposed to have an impact
on social change. Rather like its preceding technological revolutions
it can be said to have an impact on the practical level of the livedin order.
All these revolutions were the result of a cognitive revolution which
is commonly known as the Enlightenment in Europe. This rst revolution was announced, so as to speak, by the Italian Humanist
Alberti in 1435 AD with the publication of his De Pictura or Theory
of Perspective.2 With increasingly shorter intervals, it was followed
by numerous technological innovations till the decade 19041914.3
1
The references to the arts could never have been made without the deep insights
of my teacher for the History of Art, Dr Mrs O.L. Bouma of The Hague. I am
greatly indebted to her. I also wish to thank Prof. Philppe Ramirez (CNRS, Paris)
for comments on an earlier draft. The usual disclaimers apply.
2
The humanist Leon Battista Alberti (14041475) wrote De Pictura in Latin in
1435 and the architect Filippo Brunellesco (also Brunelleschi) translated this into
Italian as Della Pittura in 1436. Alberti wrote: The painter should paint only those
objects/subjects that can be seen by means of Light. He has to represent these as
if he looks out of an open window ( nestra aperta). It was Leonardo da Vinci who
later replaced this concept by that of the glass wall.
3
The rst printing presses appeared in Europe in Strasbourg (1458), in Cologne
(1465), in Rome (1467), in Barcelona and Pilsen (1468), in Utrecht and Venice
(1469), in London (1476). Copernicus theory camera obscura (1501); Dutch windmills
(1550); Galileo Galilei (1564); Johannes Bayer, rst atlas of the stars (1603); Kepler
astonomia nova (1609); Chr. Huygens, light waves (1629); Antonie van Leeuwenhoek,
observatory at Leiden (1632); R. Boyle, chemical elements (1661); Hermann Boerhaave
The physician is the servant of Nature (1736); James Watt, steam engine (1736);
Celsius, thermometer (1742); Duchene du Boulogne, electro therapy (1748); Ampere
(1820); Mendeleyev, periodic system of elements (1869); Darwin (1871); Diesel (1893).
Pablo Picassos path breaking work Les Demoiselles dAvignon (1907) was not
abstract but cubic that is the ve ladies together seen from a multitude of viewpoints within a single frame. Piet Mondriaan was the rst radically abstract painter
with his work Composition (1913).
308
4
5
6
309
7
There is, of course, on the empirical level also a demographic dimension in
this. Here I focus on the cognitive level.
310
8
J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship
and Society (Chicago, 1985).
311
312
as the highest and purest because of absence of power and his autonomy. Ideally he does not have provisions for the next day.9
9
In the Islamic perception, authority is invested in Allahs representative (alf )
who is the leader of the community of all Muslims (umma). This is based on
Mohammeds Revelation. Worldly power is invested in the sultanate. The 'ulam is
the only institution that can legitimise the power of the sultanate. Both the 'ulam
and the sultanate belong to the same worldly order in which all have to submit to
Allahs will as laid down in the revelation (A. Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India.
Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-century Maratha Svarajya (Cambridge, 1986),
pp. 2230; H. Kulke and D. Rothermund, A History of India (London, 1990),
p. 203). The Islamic perception corresponds with the Hindu perception in so far
as power and authority are mutually exclusive categories. The two perceptions dier
in their location. For the Islam both power and authority are located in the world,
whereas in the Hindu perception only power is of the world.
10
We may see large cycles here: Ancient Europe, the Middle Ages, the Modern
period and the Postmodern period.
313
<1435
14351904
>1904
concepts
image
surreal
Real
virtual real
sound
monophony
polyphony
a-tonal
viewpoint
Theocentric
Anthropocentric
Cosmocentric
perspective
Nature
is Culture
versus Culture
versus Culture*
person (Self )
multiple
Unitary
unitary*
separated
domains
separated
domains
supralocal
(centralised)
global
local
11
The unitary person can play dierent roles without change in his set of
principles.
314
say since the late fteenth century. This cannot be said of the concept of the unitary person and the perception of society.
What does divine centric painting tell us? With the God(s) usually situated above, the divine centric view is one from above. This
would imply that a painter can put all 3-dimensional subjects and
objects in a 2-dimensional at surface as long or as small as he perceives them and at any place on the surface. Each subject/object is
then painted within its own context, while the relationships between
them is expressed in terms of scale, colour or angle. This method
of representation does not show logically separated domains but an
intertwining of domains.
I am not sure whether I am right here and even less sure whether
the perception of intertwining domains is necessarily linked with the
concepts of the multiple self. If these linkages can be proved, the
Enlightenment is clearly a Cognitive Revolution. The decade 1904
1914 is, then, a hinge as it makes for the culmination of the cognitive
revolution. At the same time it seems to me the announcement of
a new cognitive revolution.
The observed sequenceArts-Sciences-Politicsurges us to follow
modern art, particularly painting, closely. We may now look forward
to painting that will go beyond three dimensions, but will have to
stay within one sense (sight). House Art and the disappearing of Art
in itself: production was followed by reproduction and this is succeeded by no reproduction at all but the artist displays himself as
Art or he enters his painting himself; the magic of disappearance
(for example Streetwise in the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, 1998). The
fourth and other dimensions can be described as the third eye:
the clairvoyance or the looking around a corner. More complicated
announcements are thinkable if the artists make use of all ve senses
(sight, sound, smell, taste and touch) in a 3-dimensional object, or
in a simple or multiple spatial context, accomplish a transformation
of the dodecaphonic scale into the plastic arts without falling into
the trap of Dadaism.
These announcements may be followed by Scientic discoveries
of the 4th-n dimensions up-setting many of the existing theories.
Finally, it may lead to a complete overhaul of known political economic relationships. We may label this second breakthrough as cosmocentric. God will be completely out of the picture, Man totally
dissected, or reconstructed as a clone, and the planet and its micro
and macro relationships will take centre stage. The Cosmocentric
315
12
Between 1435 and 1904 the plastic arts represented, the music was tonal and
science had achieved. From this decade onwards the arts make visible, the music
becomes a-tonal and in science the atom as a mini-constellation was discovered. In
all cases the arts have preceded science as if the arts had premonitions of what science was going to achieve. The concept of the atom (a-tomos in Greek) was rst
formulated by Heraclites (544483 BC). Niels Bohrs atom model (1913 AD) was
a hypothesis based on calculations, not observations. In the political domain the
process of decolonization began and later the policy of Realpolitik that is the disconnection of economics from politics.
13
A. Toynbee, A Study of History (London, 1954).
316
eld of astro-physics forced an all-powerful God to legitimise himself and so the theocentric phase evolved into an anthropocentric.
Happiness was no longer sought in the Hereafter but in the Here
and Now. The rapid increase in the number of scientic discoveries at increasingly shorter intervals pushed God into the background.
As Zygmunt Bauman says: Bereaved by God and His secular emulators, the modern person needs somebody, some individual ideology
of justication, to replace the declining collective ideologies. [second
italics are mine].14 In Europe one survival strategy followed the other.
The Theocentric phaseGod is the all-powerful Other; Happiness
in the Hereafterwas followed by the Anthropocentric phaseGod
has to legitimise himself; Happiness Here and Now. Next came the
Anthropocentric phase: God became the third party in human love;
Happiness in erotic here and now. At present we witness the
Cosmocentric strategy: God is Dead; Solitary Happiness here and
now. The political system too evolved from one system into another.
Early tribal and State systems evolved into feudal systems and nally
into the Modern State. In India such evolutions can not be seen.
Here we see a tradition of juxtaposition of survival strategies and
political systems. In the history of India, cognitive revolutions did
take place, but unlike in Europe, they took place on an individual
level. With the introduction of Information Technology in India, the
second cognitive revolution was introduced by the Modern State.
As early as 1936, the German philosopher, Walter Benjamin, stated
that until the beginning of the twentieth century every work of Art
was unique. Thereafter, each work of Art could be reproduced.15
More than half a century later, the British novelist Julian Barnes,
gave a follow-up to Benjamin with his satirical novel England,
England. Inspired by the American lm Westworld he describes
the valorization of Culture in the age in which everything can be
reproduced. What is left over is the hyperreal and the loss of the
original. In all places where there is a concentration of industries in
the Information Technology sectors, whether in Europe or India, we
nd amusement parks (imagination as a separate industrialised
domain) of the kind of Disneyland. During the past ten years or so
14
Z. Bauman, Survival as a Social Construct, in M. Featherstone (ed.), Cultural
Theory and Cultural Change (London, 1992), p. 16.
15
W. Benjamin, Illuminations (London, 1973).
317
such Theme Parks have been erected near Paris (Eurodisney and
Parc Asterix), near Cologne (Fantasialand), in the Netherlands (the
updated Efteling Park), near Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mysore (GRS
Fantasy Park) in India. This is no coincidence. The parks that are
presented to us as imaginary in contrast to the real, but as Baudrillard
puts it concealing the fact the real is no longer real.16 In the same
environments we see heightened attention for fashion and fashion
shows and, of course in Paris, the headquarters of the worldwide
satellite FashionTV channel. Fashion has nothing to do with the contrast between beautiful and ugliness. It is the ecstacy of the beautiful: the pure and empty form of a spiralling aesthetics. Simulation
is the ecstacy of the real.17 The societies around the IT sectors,
wherever they are, are no longer real. The real does not concede
anything to the benet of the imaginary: it concedes only to the benet of the more real than real (the hyperreal) and to the more true
than true. This is simulation.18 We are witnessing the emergence of
the Simulation State.
16
Baudrillard in M. Poster, Jean Baudrillard. Selected Writings (Cambridge, 1992),
p. 172.
17
Poster, Jean Baudrillard, p. 187.
18
Poster, Jean Baudrillard, p. 188.
19
On the cognitive level, the Scriptural Tradition and the Traditional Practices
318
Scriptural
Tradition
Traditional
Practices
Modern
State
Simulation
State
image
realistic
perfection
abstract
real
virtual
sound
monophony
monophony
polyphony
polyphony
viewpoint
3-dimensional 3-dimensional
3 in 2
dimensions
3 in 2
dimensions
Nature
is Culture
is Culture
versus
Culture
versus Culture
person (Self)
multiple
multiple
unitary
multiple
power and
authority
separated
separated
equated
equated
perception of
society
integrated
domains
integrated
domains
separated
domains
separated
domains
local
supralocal
mode of
supralocal
communication
global
319
Galey demonstrated for a Hindu caste society of the Indian Himalayas that
the Indigenous Knowledge System of the inhabitants of the hill districts of Uttar
Pradesh is informed by the intertwining domains which we call the religious, the
social, the political and the economic ( J.-C. Galey, Creditors, Kings and Death,
in C. Malamoud (ed.), Debts and Debtors (New Delhi, 1983), pp. 67121). Ostors
analytical description of a Bengali town demonstrates the intertwining of such indigenous domains as history, market, ritual, theatre and revolution (A. Ostor,
Culture and Power: Legend, Ritual, Bazaar and Rebellion in a Bengali Society (New Delhi,
1984). In my own study on Indigenous Economic Concepts among South Indian
artisans I demonstrated that the social, religious, economic, and political domains
are intertwined in the Indigenous Knowledge System ( J. Brouwer, Conict between
Modern and Indigenous Concepts in the Small Enterprise Workplace. A Proposal,
Social Anthropology, 8 (2000), pp. 181202).
21
M. Douglas, The Cloud God and the Shadow Self , Social Anthropology, 3
(1995), p. 84.
320
the Modern State, Douglas states that a composite person is unacceptable not for intellectual but for forensic and political reasons.22
In the judicial eld, neither the theory of multiple personalities nor
that of intertwining domains is acceptable. In all its elds of operation the Modern State works with the concept of the unitary person and cause/eect relations within a single domain of reference.23
A relevant conclusion drawn from the indological insights states
that the Indian world is divided into a social realm of self-interested
immanence and an individualized realm of ritual and renunciatory
transcendence. Both Dumont and Heesterman agree that in Europe
the individual and society coexist in the world, while in India the
individual can exist only outside of society as renouncer.24 This leaves
Indian society with a collectivity of persons with multiple selves or
rather dividuals as the personal level always demands that the self
is placed in a context. Each context is guided by its own rules and
the person acts accordingly. This is possible if the person consists of
more selves. In contrast to the unitary person, the multiple person so to speak, is not an in-dividual but a dividual, whom I suggest
to call a soloist. This term is given by a comparison of Indian and
European classical music. In European classical music the counterpoint, that is dierent melodies played at the same time, is highly
developed. It necessitates harmony between the individual players.
Orchestral and particularly symphonic, music is unthinkable without
harmony or musical relationship between dierent but simultaneous
22
321
25
322
26
27
323
if the Modern State and the Simulation State are the incipient avatrs
of indigenousjuxtaposedpower and authority.
In Europe, television because of its perceived power and authority and by its unilaterality has thrown the social process out of balance. The traditional collectivistic and exchange based European
society has pinned great hopes on the corrective eectivity of the
internet. But the combination of collectivity and virtual reality creates a new perception of the Self with unforeseen implications for
the Modern State.
326
327
1
P.R.S. Moorey, The emergence of the light horse-drawn chariot in the Near
East, World Archaeology, 18 (1986), pp. 196215
2
A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000330 BC, 2 vols. (London, 1995), p. 190.
3
Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East, p. 297.
4
W. Rau, Staat und Gesellschaft im alten Indien nach den Brahmana-Texten dargestellt
(Wiesbaden, 1957), p. 68.
328
ante-dated the chariot. The archer had to wear a mailed coat (made
of rhinoceros-skin in South Asia), because he could not carry a shield.5
Next to the archer the driver of the chariot was of great importance. He was unarmed and according to Sanskrit sources he was
naked to the waist and would thus have been an easy target for the
enemy.6 But the code of honour ruled him out as a target. The concept of dharmayuddha (righteous warfare) prevailed among the warriors who would not attack unarmed men. In terms of rank the
chariot-driver was placed lower than the archer, but there are references to his being a close companion of the archer. Some sources
mention that the chariot driver was entitled to one fourth of the
booty which the archer made in a war.7 The king was expected to
be a good archer and the sta (herald) who accompanied him everywhere was presumably also the driver of his chariot.8
The chariot-culture extended all the way to Greece and there is
an ode of Pindar (522446 BC) celebrating a chariot-driver who
knows exactly how to guide the horse by restraining or whipping it
at the right moment.9 This was certainly also true of the chariotdrivers of ancient India. The best archer would be lost if he did not
have such an expert companion. The division of labour was very
pronounced, it seems that in general the one was not trained to
master the skills of the other. But there are some exceptions mentioned in Sanskrit literature. In an emergency even a king could volunteer to act as a chariot-driver which implies that he must have
learned this art, too. However, there seem to be no references to
chariot-drivers turning into archers.
In addition to those who used the chariot, the maker of chariots
(rathakra) was also a highly valued specialist. In Sanskrit sources he
is mentioned as one of the jewels (ratna) adorning the kings court.
The king had to visit him in the course of certain ceremonies and
he seems to have inhabited about the largest compound in the small
capital of such an early king. It is said that he had to house the
guards of the horse to be sacriced at the avamedha (horse sacrice)
5
6
7
8
9
329
10
11
12
330
13
331
concern. His fall would put an end to the battle. Accordingly the
movements of the royal elephant were narrowly circumscribed. The
game of chess which mirrors an Indian battleeld shows this very
clearly. The king also mounted the elephant on ceremonial occasionseven British viceroys practised this later on.
War-elephants were expensive to maintain and it was not enough
to have just a few of them. In medieval times the price of a good
war-elephant was considered to be equivalent to that of 500 ordinary horses.14 Several hundred elephants were required for an ecient
army corps which could traverse long distances and overwhelm the
enemy. The famous transfer of 500 elephants to Seleukos Nikator
by Chandragupta Maurya clearly shows the dimensions of this kind
of armament. This transfer was made in the context of a peace
treaty, it was thus not a generous gift. But presumably Chandragupta
had at least 1000 or more elephants left after he had parted with
those which he sent to Seleukos. The enormous investment in warelephants made sure that the great empires would expand and the
smaller ones would go to the wall. The elephant had a centralising
function which the chariot never had.
Social stratication in such empires was very dierent from that
of the earlier Aryan kingdoms. Imperial ocers rather than noble
warriors were the new ruling elite. The control of long-distance trade
became of much greater importance than ever before. One could
probably speak of trade-based empires, and the Mauryan one seems
to have been a particularly good example. The pattern of distribution of Ashokas famous edicts shows that while many areas of the
interior remained more or less untouched, the Gangetic plains, the
coasts and some trade routes running across the subcontinent were
under the control of the emperor. The war-elephants extended the
dimensions of military intervention enormously.
Imperial governors were posted throughout the empire. They also
had to get Ashokas edicts carved into rocks. There is evidence of
this in a South Indian inscription which contains so to speak the
covering letter of instruction in addition to the edict. The man who
carved it into stone may well have been illiterate and simply copied
everything contained in the paper or palmleaf given to him.
14
S. Digby, War-horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate (Oxford, 1971), p. 68.
332
333
could cover long distances at a high speed. Just like the chariot which
was developed in western Asia and then introduced into India, cavalry warfare had emerged in that area, too. It had contributed to
the rapid spread of Islamic rule. But unlike the chariot which gave
rise to a nobility of free professional warriors, Islamic cavalry warfare depended on highly specialised slaves who were trained to ride
and ght from their childhood. Promising boys could be literally
caught young. As slaves they were bound to their ruler by stronger
bonds than any noble warrior to his overlord. On the other hand
there was an amazing social mobility in such a slave society. A good
ghter could quickly rise to become a general and if he was daring
enough he could usurp the throne and become a sultan.
The war-horse by itself did not have a centralising function, but
the system of military feudalism based on the assignment (iq' ) of
revenue grants which were given to ocers for supporting cavalry
troops did have such a centralising eect. The sultan usually saw to
it that such grants were distributed evenly. Moreover, the holders of
such grants were often shifted from one position to the other; by
birth as well as by promotion they were usually strangers in the
places where they served. Therefore they did not have the benet
of specic local support. They could not think of secession as their
colleagues could easily put them down. If they were very ambitious
they could only try to conquer the centre of power and replace the
sultan. This strengthened central power as only the most daring commander would emerge victorious.
In one respect the war-horse also contributed to the centralising
of power: it was very expensive. The breeding of war-horses proved
to be very dicult in India. The climate was not suited for horses
and they succumbed to many illnesses, but there were no experienced veterinarians in India. However, the most important impediment to horse-breeding in India was the absence of adequate pastures which would provide the horses with good grass to eat and
ample space to move about. The interior of the Kathiawad peninsula was one of the few places in India which provided such ideal
conditions. Typically the local horse-breeders were semi-nomadic
predatory tribes.16 Such people would be a pain in the neck for
16
J.J.L. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 17101780 (Delhi, 1999),
p. 91f.
334
17
18
19
335
336
The impact of eld-artillery
337
ners. This was what Selim had done at Chaldiran, a battle plan
which Babur obviously had studied in detail. But in addition Babur
used the Uzbek tactics of archers on horseback to drive the huge
army of the sultan towards the battery of guns.20 The archers would
dash along the anks of the sultans army, turn around their horses
and shoot their arrows at the moment when the horse stood still.
They repeated this manoeuvre again and again. Combining these
tactics with artillery warfare was certainly a strategic feat. Presumably
Babur was the rst one to adopt this combination.
The eld-artillery remained the mainstay of Mughal power throughout. It was an extremely expensive type of armament and its production required special skills. Even when the Rajputs had become
trusted allies of the Mughals, the art of producing guns remained a
secret which was not passed on to them. The maharaja of Jaipur
could start his own gunfoundry only much later when the power of
the Great Mughal had declined.
The Mughals not only paid much attention to the gunfoundry,
they also improved the gun carriages to make the guns more mobile
and better suited for accurate ring. Baburs guns were only loosely
mounted on carts and had to be taken down in order to be put in
a proper ring position. In addition to the improvement of guns and
carriages, the Mughals also produced better gunpowder than the
Europeans, because they had access to excellent Indian saltpetre
which was also exported at a handsome prot.21
The Great Mughal spent a great deal of his time on tour so as
to display his power in all parts of his vast empire. His camp was
huge and well equipped. The eld-artillery always accompanied him.
When the camp was shifted, the artillery was sent ahead two days
earlier to the next location.22 This was a rather leisurely procedure.
But the artillery also accompanied the Mughal army to distant
battleelds. Thus Prince Dara Shukoh on an expedition to Afghanistan
managed to cross the Bolan Pass with his artillery in 1653.23
20
S. Frster, Feuer gegen Elefanten, Panipat, 20. April 1526, in S. Frster
et al. (eds.), Schlachten der Weltgeschichte. Von Salamis bis Sinai (Mnchen, 2001), pp. 12337.
21
J.J.L. Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 15001700
(London, 2002), pp. 1489.
22
Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 107.
23
Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 24.
338
339
24
340
25
G. Himmelsbach, Je lay emprinsich habs versucht. Murten, 22. Juni
1476, in Frster, Schlachten, p. 118.
26
G. Kronenbitter, Belagern und Entsetzen. Wien, 12. September 1683, in
Frster, Schlachten, p. 155.
341
armed with pikes, but with musketeers at the four corners. The imperial army of the Hapsburg dynasty deployed such mighty terzios in
the battles of the Thirty Years War. But they were confronted with
a highly innovative enemy, the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus,
who perished in the battle of Ltzen in Saxony in 1632 when he
was only 38 years old. He was the rst to form small companies of
musketeers who would take turns in ring their salvoes and reloading their guns. He also supplemented his cavalry with dragoons,
musketeers on horseback, who could swiftly attack or encircle the
enemys lines.27 His astute tactics and brilliant strategy were copied
by others in later years. The common denominator of European
infantry warfare was organised collective action and not individual
marksmanship.
The rise of the new infantry warfare coincided with the recruitment of standing armies in Europe. The idea that one could defend
oneself in a fortress and recapture ones territory after the enemy
had disappeared was given up. The fate of states was now decided
in the open battleeld were large numbers of troops were pitted
against each other. These troops consisting of well-trained footsoldiers were housed in barracks and maintained on a permanent footing. In India troops were usually recruited ad hoc and there was
always a oating population of soldiers looking for suitable employment.28 Infantry drill, however, was like a strenuous type of sport
for which constant exercise was required.
Actually infantry warfare was not at all of the centralising kind.
It was cheap and it could easily proliferate. But in India, due to the
prevailing cavalry mentality of its warriors who always looked down
on the humble footsoldier, infantry warfare was simply beyond the
comprehension of rulers and generals. The Mughals had never
recruited a specialised infantry like the Ottoman janissaries.29 At the
most they relied on their marksmen (tufangchs) who aimed their shots
individually but were not trained in collective action. This was of
great advantage to the European East India Companies. They did
27
R. Weigley, Auf der Suche nach der Entscheidungsschlacht. Ltzen, 16.
November 1632, in Frster, Schlachten, p. 142f.
28
D.H.A. Kol, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The Ethnohistory of the Military
Labour Market in Hindustan, 14501850 (Cambridge, 1990).
29
Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 156.
342
not attract much attention when they started to recruit native footsoldiers and trained them in their factories as their trading posts
were called. The French Governor Dupleix was the pioneer in
this eld. The British soon copied his methods and even imported
British soldiers who could do double duty. As quite a few of them
had been weavers before, they could give technical advice to Indian
weavers so that they could produce exactly the kind of cloth which
the East India Company neededand they could also train native
footsoldiers.30
By the early eighteenth century when this type of infantry warfare was introduced into India, the footsoldiers had not only mastered the method of rapid re invented by Gustavus Adolphus, but
also the additional skill of shifting to lethal attacks with the bayonet
mounted on the gun which replaced the earlier pike in the late seventeenth century. When the pike was still in use it was wielded by
footsoldiers without guns who usually outnumbered those carrying
muskets. Combining the gun with the pike by means of the bayonet which could be xed to the gun in no time made smaller contingents doubly eective. Moreover, the old musket had by now been
replaced by improved guns with greater precision and more convenient ignition.
In addition to being masters of infantry warfare, the East India
Company had also another great advantage. As it was in itself a
product of the commercialisation of power at home it tted quite
well into the trend of commercialisation of power in India in the
eighteenth century. Moreover, its leading men were bookkeepers
rather than daring military heroes. They always paid their soldiers
regularly and never indulged in military adventures which were
unprotable. In this way they were far superior to Indian rulers and
generals who often won a battle but lost the war, because they suddenly found out that they could not pay their soldiers any longer.
This calculating spirit of the British was accompanied by a rather
reliable collective memory. All servants of the Company, bookkeepers and heroes alike, were parts of an organisation with a strong
esprit de corps. Due to the need of reporting all essential events and
decisions to the distant headquarters in London, the servants of the
30
S. Aiol, Calicos und gedrucktes Zeug. Die Entwicklung der englischen Tuchveredelung und
der Tuchhhandel der East India Company, 16501750 (Wiesbaden, 1987), p. 381f.
343
344
the government in London argued that the Suez Canal was actually more important for India than for Great Britain so as to justify its refusal to pay for those troops.31
The British-Indian army was a big standing army. After the Mutiny
it was considered to be necessary to station a substantial number of
British soldiers in India (about 60,000) as a counterweight to the
Indian soldiers (about 120,000). The cost of maintaining the British
soldiers in India was much higher than the amount spent on the
much larger Indian contingent. As imperial duties such as the annexation of Upper Burma demanded more military power, the total
strength of the army was augmented to 210,000.32
The infantry remained the mainstay of the British-Indian army.
It was only at a very late stage that a new type of armament was
introducedthe tank. This new military vehicle combined the mobility of a chariot with the ruggedness of a war-elephant and the
repower of the eld artillery. Other services such as the navy and
the airforce had no role in British-India. They emerged only in independent India and Pakistan.
The recruitment for the British-Indian army was highly skewed.
As Sikhs and Panjabi Muslims had helped the British at the time of
the Mutiny, they were praised as martial races and were given
preference in the British-Indian army. This meant that the Panjab
beneted much more than any other British-Indian province from
the remittances of the soldiers to their families at home. The lions
share of military emoluments was, however, claimed by the British
ocers who not only received a high pay while they were in service, but also very generous pensions after they retired and settled
in Great Britain. These pensions were part of the famous Home
Charges, the substantial transfer of funds from India to Great Britain.
Indian nationalists had criticised this excessive expenditure and
had asked for an Indianisation of the corps of ocers. They could
rejoice in the Indianisation brought about by the Second World War.
After the attainment of independence, the army was welcomed as a
national asset and not treated as mercenaries of the British. The
Indian National Army (INA) recruited from among Indian prison-
31
W. Simon, Die britische Militrpolitik in Indien und ihre Auswirkungen auf den britischindischen Finanzhaushalt, 18781919 (Wiesbaden, 1974), p. 229.
32
Simon, Die britische Militrpolitik, p. 277.
345
346
347
far. The last section of this paper is therefore conjectural rather than
based on rm evidence.
The centralised power of the atom state
In dealing with the atom state in South Asia we are again primarily interested in the social and political consequences of the adoption of this new type of armament rather than in the technological
and strategic aspects of nuclear warfare. Nevertheless, a short review
of the emergence of the atom bomb in India and Pakistan is required
in order to understand its consequences. Until the tests of 1998 all
preparations were closely guarded secrets and nuclear ambiguity
was the policy of both India and Pakistan. Now, since the bombs
are so to speak on display, the history of the respective preparations has been openly discussed. The review must also include a
brief summary of the conicts between India and Pakistan. These
conicts gave rise to the quest for the atom bomb and now shape
the relations between the two atom states.
The quest for the bomb started in India in the late 1960s after
China had joined the nuclear club in 1964 and Prime Minister
Shastris idea of a nuclear umbrella which another big power would
be prepared to hold over India had failed for obvious reasons. In
1971 at the time of the secession of Bangladesh, President Nixon
had sent an aircraft carrier armed with nuclear missiles into the Bay
of Bengal. As he later on admitted, he would have used those missiles against India if the Soviet Union had joined the war. He would
have probably hesitated to do so if India would have had nuclear
weapons, too. Indira Gandhi may have known about this, at any
rate she ordered the explosion of a nuclear device in 1974 and
this spurred Bhutto to speed up his quest for an Islamic bomb.
He encouraged the activities of the Pakistani scientist, A.Q. Khan,
who was later on praised as the father of the Islamic bomb, but
he also got additional technological support from China. Writing
about it in his death cell in 1977, Bhutto stated that his greatest
claim to national fame could be based on his success of concluding
a treaty on nuclear technology transfer with China in 1976.
General Zia got Bhutto executed but continued his nuclear programme with equal vigour. In 1977 Morarji Desai had become Prime
Minister of India. As an old Gandhian he did not like the idea of
348
349
the Line of Control in Kashmir and gain some advantages while the
Indian defenders would be taken by surprise and not dare to cross
the line for fear of nuclear retaliation.33
In the Kargil war of summer 1999 which Musharraf had planned
in this way, everything seemed to work according to his expectationsexcept for the successful Indian reaction. While the Pakistanis
had crossed the Line of Control, the Indians did not do so but managed to defeat the Pakistanis nevertheless. By the end of June 1999
when Musharraf met the American Chief of Sta, General Anthony
Zinni, who had come to Pakistan in order to put and end to this
aair, Musharraf knew that his game was up and readily agreed to
a withdrawal. But he also saw to it that President Clinton would
receive Prime Minister Sharif in Washington on July 4, 1999. Sharif
was not in Pakistan at that moment and when he returned Musharraf
sent him o to Washingtom, assuring him of Clintons personal interest and asserting that the Kashmir issue had been successfully internationalised in this way.34 Due to this clever arrangement, it was
not Musharraf but Sharif who had to sign a capitulation in Washington,
taking the blame for Musharraf s unsuccessful brinkmanship.
Although the Kargil war ended with a defeat for Pakistan, it nevertheless established the fact that proxy wars can be conducted
under the roof of mutual deterrence. Of course, the USA and the
Soviet Union had also conducted hot proxy wars in the era of the
Cold War, but these had not been fought across a Line of Control
which was practically the border between the two nations. Actually
it seems strange that Musharraf should speak of a proxy war in this
context. But in order to understand this one must know that Pakistan
maintained throughout that the troops that had crossed the Line of
Control were Kashmiri freedom ghters and not regular Pakistani
soldiers. The Indian side could prove that they were ghting regular Pakistani troops and not freedom ghters, but the Pakistani
side stuck to its pretence and even refused to accept the corpses of
its soldiers.
The events of September 11, 2001 and the American alliance
against terror complicated the relations between the two South Asian
33
D. Rothermund, Krisenherd Kaschmir. Der Konikt der Atommchte Indien und Pakistan
(Mnchen, 2002), p. 99.
34
Rothermund, Krisenherd, p. 105f.
350
atom states even further. Islamic terrorists now felt called upon to
drive a wedge between the two new partners of this alliance. The
rst attempt was a suicide attack on the legislative assembly of the
state of Jammu and Kashmir in Srinagar. Maulana Masood Azhar
who planned this attack immediately thereafter released the names
of four of those who had sacriced their lives in Srinagar. They were
all citizens of Pakistan. Obviously this was meant to embarrass
Musharraf whom the terrorists regarded as a traitor. India obviously
saw this point and did not make much of this incident so as not to
upset the American sponsors of the alliance against terror. But the
next attack which was probably also masterminded by Azhar could
not be taken lightly. In December 2001 terrorists attacked the Indian
Parliament. They were gunned down by Indian police at the last
moment. They had used a police car and police uniforms to disguise themselves. The Government of India claims that they have
rmly established the complicity of two Pakistani terrorist groups in
this attack. The Pakistani side denies that, but has not oered an
alternative explanation.
The Government of India had to react to this severe provocation
and massed Indian troops at the border so as to force Musharraf to
do something against the terrorists. He also had to respond to
American pressure concerning this and got some terrorists arrested.
He then made Prime Minister Vajpayee the target of all kinds of
friendly gestures, but, of course, Vajpayee continued to see in him
the man who had prepared the Kargil war while he was hugging
Sharif in Lahore. For the time being the feud between the two atom
states has been suspended due to massive American eorts at mediation. But the feud could easily are up again due to some provocation. The special problem in South Asia is that this provocation
may not come from a government but from freewheeling terrorists
who have their own agenda.
When we turn to the centralising aspects of the atom state which
we want to highlight here, we may start with the issue of ghting
terrorism, because terrorists pose a twofold challenge to the atom
state, they may attack nuclear installations or steal nuclear weapons
and they may cause a nuclear war between two atom states by hitting the centre (Parliament or government etc.) of one state while
obviously representing the other. Therefore the atom state needs
special methods and forces dedicated to counterinsurgency. Indias
National Security Guards (Black Cats) are a special force of this
351
kind. Nowadays they mostly serve as bodyguards of members of government. They are a small force of at the most 10,000 men. Their
manpower and their equipment must be upgraded in order to meet
the new requirements of the atom state.
Black Cats can only operate successfully if they are backed up
by suitable intelligence. Very intensive surveillance will certainly be
one of the undesirable but necessary consequences of maintaining
an atom state. Citizens will have to acquiesce in it, because they
otherwise face the alternative of perishing in a nuclear holocaust.
The Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan which has so far been
mostly active in breeding terrorists may also be useful when it comes
to controlling them.
But not only counterinsurgency requires new forces and new methods, the armed forces in general have to face new tasks in an atom
state. The hope that mutual deterrence may put an end to conventional warfare and help to reduce military expenditure is an illusion. Musharraf s Kargil war has demonstrated this very clearly.
Moreover, there is the new type of auxiliary armament without which
nuclear warheads would be useless. Rockets of various kinds are
required, and there have to be rocket regiments to handle them. So
far there are very few of such rocket regiments in South Asia, but
they will certainly proliferate. Then there are military satellites which
may be used for reconnaissance as well as for targeting. All this
equipment is very expensive and will be a burden on the defence
budget.
The central budget which in India has always been much larger
than the sum of al state budgets will probably have to be upgraded
for such purposes. This will be a further blow to Indian federalism.
In fact, just as all other expensive weapons like elephants, good warhorses and eld artillery which have been discussed above, the atom
bomb privileges the central power. Moreover, decision making will
have to be highly centralised in an atom state. In may ways the
atom bomb serves as a symbol of centralised national power. India
which has always been attuned to symbolism in politics has even
managed to provide this with a personal equation: Abdul Kalam,
the Father of the Indian Atom Bomb has been elected President
of India.
1966
Kol, D.H.A., Libertatis Ergo: De beroerten binnen Leiden in de jaren 1566 en
1567, Leids Jaarboekje, pp. 11848.
1969
Duke, A.C. and D.H.A. Kol, The Times of Troubles in the County of Holland,
15661567, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 82, pp. 31637.
1971
Kol, D.H.A., Sanyasi Trader-Soldiers, Indian Economic and Social History Review,
8,2, pp. 2138.
1972
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van E. Leach and S.N. Mukherjee (eds), Elites in
South Asia, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 85, pp. 2357.
1973
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van N. Mansergh and E.W.R. Lumby (eds), The
Transfer of Power, 19427, Vols I & II, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 86, pp. 4879.
Kol, D.H.A., Review of A.M. Serajuddin, The Revenue Administration of the
East India Company in Chittagong, 17611785, Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, 16, pp. 1112.
1974
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van A.C. Niemeijer, The Khilafat Movement in
India, 19191924, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 87, pp. 1235.
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van C. Dobbin, Urban Leadership in Western India:
Politics and Communities in Bombay City, 18401885, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis,
87, p. 265.
Kol, D.H.A., Economische ontwikkeling zonder sociale verandering: De katoen
van Hindoestan, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 87, pp. 54553.
1975
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education and
Political Development in India, 18981920, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 88, pp.
4201.
1976
Kol, D.H.A., Indi in de Middeleeuwen [i.e. Kols Dutch translation of A.K.
Majumdar], in G. Mann and A. Nitschke (eds), Universele Wereldgeschiedenis, VI,
Den Haag and Hasselt, pp. 10784.
354
...
1978
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van H.K. sJacob (red.), De Nederlanders in Kerala
16631701: De memories en instructies, in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 91, pp.
1156.
Kol, D.H.A., Review of P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal
in the Eighteenth Century, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient,
21,3, pp. 3346.
Kol, D.H.A., Review of R.N. Banerjee, Economic Progress of the East India
Company on the Coromandel Coast, 17021746, Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, 21,3, p. 336.
1979
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van J.M. Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience:
The Mahatma in Indian politics, 192834, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 92, pp.
26971.
Kol, D.H.A., A Study of Land Transfers in Mau Tahsil, District Jhansi, in K.N.
Chaudhuri and C.J. Dewey (eds.), Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and
Social History, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 5385.
Kol, D.H.A., Kaste in India, Zuid-Azi Bulletin, 1, pp. 18.
Kol, D.H.A. and H.W. van Santen (eds.), De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over
Mughal Indi, 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie (Werken uitgegeven door de LinschotenVereeniging, LXXXI), The Hague: Martinus Nijho.
Van Anrooij, Francien, Dirk H.A. Kol, Jan T.M. van Laanen, and Gerard J.
Telkamp (eds), Between People and Statistics: Essays on Modern Indonesian History presented to P. Creutzberg, The Hague: Martinus Nijho.
Kol, D.H.A., De Kontroleur G.K. van Hogendorp (18441879): Een enthousiast statisticus, in Van Anrooij et al. (see above), pp. 175206.
Kol, D.H.A., Introduction to Chapter I: Science and Technology in Indian
History, in Asie du Sud: Traditions et Changements (Colloques Internationaux du Centre
National de la Recherche Scientique, no. 582), Paris, pp. 312.
1980
Hoetjes, B.J.S., D.H.A. Kol, en D. Kooiman, India (Panorama van de Wereld), Haarlem:
Romen.
1981
Kol, D.H.A., Review of E. van Donzel, Foreign Relations of Ethiopia 16421700:
Documents relating to the Journeys of Khoja Murad, Bibliotheca Orientalis, 38,
pp. 2025.
Kol, D.H.A., Review of Keller, Strukturen der Unterentwicklung, Indien 17571914,
The Journal of Asian Studies, 40,2, pp. 4089.
1982
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van S.F. Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian
Frontier: The Mappilas of Malabar 14981922, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 95,
pp. 23940.
Emmer, P.C., D.H.A. Kol, and R.J. Ross, The Expansion of Europe and the
Transformation of Third World Agriculture: Two Colonial Models, Itinerario, 6,
pp. 43377.
Kol, D.H.A., Review of Susil Chaudhuri, Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal, 16501720: With Special Reference to the English East India
...
355
Company, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 25,3, pp. 3289.
Kol, D.H.A., Review of H.W. van Santen, De Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie
in Gujarat en Hindoestan, 16201660, Itinerario, 6, pp. 102.
1983
Kol, D.H.A., An Armed Peasantry and its Allies: Rajput Tradition and State
Formation in Hindustan, 14501850 (Unpublished PhD thesis, Leiden University).
Kol, D.H.A., Review of C.A. Bayly, Rulers Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian
Society in the Age of British Expansion, 17701870, Itinerario, 7, pp. 14850.
1984
Kol, D.H.A. (gen. ed.), Twee culturen: De Republiek en Java (Orintatiecursus Cultuurwetenschappen Open Universiteit), 8 vols, Heerlen.
Kol, D.H.A., La Nation Chrtienne Surate au Debut du XVIIme Sicle, in
J.L. Mige (ed.), La Femme dans les Socits Coloniales (IHPOM, Univ. de Provence),
Aix-en-Provence, pp. 716.
Kol, D.H.A., India, een Parlementaire Democratie: echt, maar anders, Grenzeloos, 5 (Nov./Dec.), pp. 145.
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia:
c. 1300 to the Present, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 97, pp. 2367.
1985
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van R.J. Moore, Escape from Empire, Tijdschrift
voor Geschiedenis, 98, pp. 2935.
Kol, D.H.A., Indische Geschiedenis: een Overwonnen Contradictie?, Groniek, 92,
pp. 2841.
1986
Bayly, C.A. and D.H.A. Kol (eds.), Two Colonial Empires: Comparative Essays on the
History of India and Indonesia in the Nineteenth Century, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijho.
Kol, D.H.A., Administrative Tradition and the Dilemma of Colonial Rule: An
Example of the Early 1830s, in Bayly and Kol (see above), pp. 95109.
Fasseur, C. and D.H.A. Kol, Some Remarks on the Development of Colonial
Bureaucracies in India and Indonesia, Itinerario, 10,1, pp. 3155.
1987
Kol, D.H.A., Geweld en Geweldloosheid: de twee Gezichten van India, Reector
(Feb.), pp. 22631.
Kol, D.H.A., De Dekolonisatie van Brits-Indi: Rijksreconstructie en Dorpsopbouw, Spiegel Historiael, 22, pp. 3206.
Kol, D.H.A., Historiograe in Zuid-Azi: Een geval van late bloei, in R.B. van
de Weijer, P.G.B. Thissen and R. Schnberger (eds.), Tussen traditie en wetenschap:
Geschiedbeoefening in niet-westerse culturen, Nijmegen: Stichting Annales Noviomagenses
Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, pp. 113131.
1988
Houben, V.J.H. and D.H.A. Kol, Between Empire Building and State Formation:
Ocial Elites in Java and Mughal India, Itinerario 12,1, pp. 16594.
Kol, D.H.A., History and Indology at Leiden University, South Asia Newsletter, 2
(Dec.), pp. 910.
356
...
1989
Kol, D.H.A., De wijzen uit het Oosten waren woestijnhandelaren, NRC-Handelsblad
(Cultureel Supplement), 6 January.
Kol, D.H.A., and L.G. Dalhuisen, Mahatma Gandhi en de dekolonisatie van
Brits Indi, in Speellm en Geschiedenis: Congresverslag, Rotterdam Erasmus Universiteit,
April 1988, Amsterdam, pp. 323.
Kol, D.H.A., Huizingas Dissertation and the Stemmingen of the Literary
Movement of the Eighties, in W. Otterspeer (ed.), Leiden Oriental Connections 1850
1940, Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne: E.J. Brill, pp. 14152.
Kol, D.H.A., The End of an Ancien Regime: Colonial War in India, 17981818,
in J.A. de Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds.), Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial
Wars in Asia and Africa (Comparative Studies in Overseas History, 8), Leiden, New York,
Copenhagen, Cologne: E.J. Brill, pp. 2249.
Kol, D.H.A., Huizingas proefschrift en de stemmingen van Tachtig, Bijdragen
en Mededelingen betreende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 104, pp. 38092.
Kol, D.H.A., Op zoek naar root-paradigms in de Indische beschaving, in H.J.M.
Claessen (eds.), Hulp of hindernis? Het spanningsveld tussen model en werkelijkheid (ICA
Publicatie 88), Rijksuniversiteit Leiden: Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen, pp.
13153.
1990
Kol, D.H.A., Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: the Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in
Hindustan, 14501850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [paperback ed.
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002]
1991
Kol, D.H.A., India: het einde van een beproefde consensus, Jason, 16 (April),
pp. 226.
Kol, D.H.A., De hartstochtelijke nadruk op het individu leeft nog steeds in India,
NRC-Handelsblad, 17 June.
Dalhuisen, L.G., D.H.A. Kol, and A.P.C. Vendel, Gandhi: Film en werkelijkheid
(Bouwstenen voor intercultureel onderwijs, AV3), Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (Minderhedenstudies).
Kol, D.H.A., Huizinga en de Vedisch-Brahmaanse religie: Zijn college als privaat-docent te Amsterdam in 190304, in Hanneke van den Muyzenberg en
Thomas de Bruijn (eds.), Waarom Sanskrit? Honderdvijfentwintig jaar Sanskrit in Nederland
(Kern Institute Miscellanea 4), Leiden: Vereniging Vrienden van het Instituut Kern,
pp. 6473.
Kol, D.H.A., Boekbespreking van L.M. van der Mey, Nehrus droom voorbij:
1962 als keerpunt in Indias verhouding tot China, Transaktie: Tijdschrift over de
Wetenschap van Oorlog en Vrede, 20,4, pp. 4057.
Kol, D.H.A., Een Brits-Indische omwandeling, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden: Inaugural Lecture.
1992
Kol, D.H.A., The Indian and the British Law Machines: Some Remarks on Law
and Society in British India, in W.J. Mommsen and J.A. de Moor (eds.), European
Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th- and 20thCentury Africa and Asia, Oxford, New York: Berg, pp. 20135.
Hoek, A.W. van der, D.H.A. Kol, and M.S. Oort (eds.), Ritual, State and History in
South Asia: Essays in Honour of J.C. Heesterman, Leiden, New York, Cologne: E.J. Brill.
Kol, D.H.A., Huizinga and the Vedic-Brahmanic religion. His rst series of lectures at the University of Amsterdam in 190304, in A.W. van der Hoek et al.
(see above), pp. 57886.
...
357
358
...
Kol, Dirk H.A., The Polity and the Peasantry, in Gommans and Kol (see
above), pp. 20231.
Kol, D.H.A., De bajonet erin! Een kleine oorlog in Brits-Indi, in Arend Huussen,
Janny de Jong, and G Prince (eds.), Cultuurcontacten: Ontmoetingen tussen culturen in
historisch perspectief (Historische Studies IV), Groningen, pp. 12336.
Kol, D.H.A., Schilderijen van Rameshwar Singh: Kennismaking met een Indiaas
kunstenaar, Beeldaspecten 13, 4/5 (May), pp. 1214.
Kol, D.H.A., Review of Ahuja Ravi, Die Erzeugung kolonialer Staatlichkeit und
das Problem der Arbeit, International Review of Social History, 46,2, pp. 2801.
Kol, D.H.A., Jacob Haafners Journey in a Palanquin: A Passionate Farewell from
a Colonial Ancien Rgime, in Dirk W. Lnne (ed.), Tohfa-e-dil. Festschrift Helmut
Nespital, Vol. 2: Kulturwissenschaften, Reinbek: Verlag fr Orientalische Fachpublikationen, pp. 72748.
2002
Kol, Dirk, De Engelse Oostindische Compagnie, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 115,4,
pp. 54465.
Kol, D.H.A., Op zoek naar een passend geschiedbeeld: Boekbespreking van
Barbara D. Metcalf en Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of India, Tijdschrift
voor Geschiedenis, 115,4, pp. 5868.
INDEX
Abd al-Khan, 89
Abd al-Lah, 160, 165, 16970
Abdul Halim, 168
Abdul Kalam, 348, 351
Abid Ali Khan, 146
Abul Fazl, 24, 163, 170, 214
Aceh, 33, 501
Ackroyd, P., 243, 249
Adams, Maj., 143, 154, 157
Addiscombe Military College, 237
Adilshahs, 1002
Adrichem, D. van, 56
Afghans, 23, 86, 95, 138, 15965,
171, 176, 179217, 339 (see also
Pathans)
Afghanistan, 23, 86, 175, 182, 190,
198, 204, 213, 215, 334, 337, 339,
346
Africa, 276, 319
Afridis, 183, 195, 2012
Agra, 21, 39, 50, 567, 5964, 199,
203
Aguado, 78
Ahmad Khan Bangash, 1856, 188,
191, 1935, 2013, 2058
Ahmad Shah Durrani, 203, 207, 339
Ahmadabad, 47, 60
Ain Khan Sarvani, 179
Ajmer, 263
Akbar, 24, 188, 214, 217, 265, 269,
2756, 338
Ala al-Din Khalji, 334
Alam Khan, 148, 150
Alavi, S., 12, 195
Albert, L., 307
Ali Muhammad Khan Rohilla, 204
Alivardi Khan, 120
Allahabad, 163, 1856, 188, 2002,
204
Allen, B., 233
Almas Ali Khan, 2103
Alva, Conde de, 76, 87
Amar Singh, 27982
Amber, 282
Americans (USA), 2513, 261, 2689,
282, 289, 292, 296, 303, 316, 346,
34850
360
Balaji Rao, 76
Balasore, 128
Balochistan, 176
Balwant Singh, 202
Balzac, H. de, 264
Bamtelas, 197
Bandaris, 80
Bangalore, 317, 321
Bangash, 234, 179216
Bangash (Valley), 179, 1814
Bangladesh, 117, 305, 3467
Bannu, 181
Banquibazar, 120, 124, 130
Banten, 126
Bapoji Pant, 989
Barabanki, 164
Barani, Zia al-Din, 173
Barath Ram Nathji, 279
Barbak Shah, 1634, 1667, 169, 175,
177
Bardes, 72, 76, 78, 80, 83, 85, 88,
956, 99
Barendse, R., 19, 21, 69
Barid Khan Bahadur, 86
Barkat Ali, 156
Barnagul, 118
Barnes, J., 316
Bassein, 73, 768, 812, 86
Batavia, 22, 51, 56, 58, 10813,
11827, 12931
Bath, 236
Baudrillar, J., 317, 3201
Bauman, Z., 28891, 294, 299, 316
Bayana, 44, 53, 162, 166
Bayazid Biyat, 176
Bayly, C., 12
Beadnell, Mr., 241
Bedara, 117, 128, 155
Bednore, 265
Belkhana, 2289
Benares, 169, 185, 198, 202, 219,
2215, 228
Bengal, 15, 223, 25, 41, 478, 525,
72, 87, 11758, 177, 213, 2334,
236, 23940, 242, 244, 247, 252,
2745, 301, 303, 330, 347
Benjamin, W., 316
Bentinck, Lord, 268
Bento, J., 99
Berlin Wall, 298
Bes, L., 67
Betav, 217
Betia, 147
Bhadoi, 185
Bundela, 24, 189, 21732
Bundelkhand, 79, 134, 245, 180,
189, 1967, 2001, 21732, 256
Burdett-Coutts, A., 23541, 2467
Burgundy, 340
Burhanpur, 61
Burke, E., 267
Burma, 44, 3445
Butto Savant, 98
Buxar, 123
Byron, Lord, 2634, 268, 271
Calangute, 78
Calcutta, 246, 34, 39, 118, 120, 126,
135, 1456, 1578, 234, 2434,
246, 248, 252, 255, 257, 26970,
292
Calicut, 29
Calvinism, 296
Cambodia, 330
Cambridge, 6, 14, 237
Candal, 80, 85, 88, 92
Candela, 217, 222
Candrvara, 228
Carter, R., 248
caste, 810, 17, 46, 78, 80, 93, 989,
164, 170, 189, 191, 215, 242,
2712, 282, 31011, 332
Catholic, 69, 802, 84, 868, 95, 102,
311
Caucasus, 275
Cave Browne, J., 247
Central Asia, 10, 31, 39, 41, 204, 275,
327, 334
Ceylon, 22, 73, 107, 1135, 126
Chaldiran, 3367
Champanagar, 150
Chanderi, 174, 176
Chandernagore, 119, 128, 136
Chandra Parbhu, 879
Chandragupta Maurya, 331
Chardos, 78, 93
chariots, 267, 32531, 333, 338, 344
Charles the Bold, 336, 340
Charnoe, 126
Chatrasla, 218
Chatterjee, P., 3015
Chattopadhyay, B., 23, 134, 13942
Chauhans, 263
Chaul, 802, 103
Chaund, 159162, 166, 1703
Chausa, 163
chelas, 24, 180, 184, 18695, 197201,
205, 2078, 210, 2146
361
Cheribon, 118
Chinese (China), 301, 33, 144, 3478
Chinsura, 47, 1178, 120, 122,
12530, 155
Chitor, 265, 282
Cholas, 330
Christian, 29, 81, 94, 297
Chunar, 1601
Clark, G., 256
Clinton, B., 349
Clive, R., 120, 123, 1256, 129, 252,
258, 278
Cochin, 47, 80, 1056, 111, 1134
Coculim, 74
Cohn, B., 101 n. 24
Coimbra, 87
Colachel, 21, 10510, 1134
Cologne, 317
Columbus, C., 29
Congress Party, 281, 305
Conquistas Novas, 749, 87, 99
Conrad, J., 34
Coreld, W., 248
Coromandel, 32, 40, 48, 54, 79, 121,
1267
Cotton, E., 156
Couto, D. de, 73
Cromwellian Revolution, 296
Crooke, W., 165
Cultural Studies, 26, 2957
Cunra, 228
Curzon, Lord, 273, 277
Dadaism, 314
Daim Khan (chela), 188
Dalamau, 1678
Dalani Begam, 1412
Dalpat Sah, 178
Dalpat Singh (Raja), 1778
Daman, 51, 812, 856, 90
Dna, 221
Danapur (also Dinapore), 175
Danish, 118
Dara Shukoh, 337
Dariabad, 163, 167
Darling, M., 25
Dasgupta, A., 48
Dastagool, 135
Daulat Rao Scindia, 257
Daulatabad, 63
Deccan, 3940, 92, 17980, 1967,
200, 204, 217, 271
Delhi (Dehli), 14, 27, 35, 39, 50, 101,
159, 162, 167, 173, 181, 193,
362
Galenfels, Dom F. de, 80
Gama, V. da, 29
Gandhi, I., 3478
Gandhi, M., 2756, 280, 297
Ganesha Bhai Raja, 978
Ganesha Rana, 85
Ganga (also Ganges), 23, 39, 1604,
1667, 169, 172, 1745, 197, 201,
203, 2234
Garcia de Sta. Theresa, D. de, 84
Garha-Katanga, 177
Gahakura, 217
Gaur, 177
Geleynssen de Jongh, W., 56, 634, 67
Gellner, E., 283, 293, 299300
Geneva Republic, 269
Gentil, J.-B., 1534
Gentlemen XVII, 56, 121, 129
George IV, 270
Georgina, 247
German, 271, 289, 316
Ghats, 88, 118
Ghazipur, 169
Ghaznavids, 23, 213
Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai, 136,
140, 1423, 14851, 153, 1567
Ghurids, 234, 213
Gibbon, E., 262
Giddens, A., 2868, 291, 294
Girnar, 259
globalisation, 298
Goa, 21, 49, 51, 72, 74, 76, 7881,
846, 88, 929, 102, 111, 121
Goga, 86
Gomati, 16870
Gommans, J., 12, 19, 234, 67, 179
Gopala Naik, 86
Gore Lla (Lla Kavi), 218, 2258
Govind Rao, 74
Grant, M., 225
Grant, S., 225
Greeks (Greece), 253, 260, 263,
26772, 328
Grierson, G., 10
Gujarat, 20, 4750, 535, 60, 176,
271
Gulbadam Begam, 163
Gurgin Khan, 23, 13344, 1467,
1501, 1538
Gustavus Adolphus, 3412
Gwalior, 162, 166
Hackert, J., 212, 10515
Haz Rahmat Khan, 203, 206
363
364
Kakatiyas, 335
Kalpi, 167, 1746
Kamgar Khan, 150, 152
Kamgar Khan Baluch, 202
Kampil, 200
Kanara, 79
Kanauj, 163, 223
Kangra, 170
Kannada, 322
Kanpur, 25, 167, 242, 244
Kantat, 170
Karamnasa, 163
Karana, 2214
Kargil, 34951
Karim Khan Zand, 215
Karlanis, 1814
Karra, 1623, 167
Kasganj, 193
Kashmir, 34850
Kasim Khan Bangash, 185
Kasimbazar, 1178, 122, 125
Kathiawad, 333
Katwa, 149, 152
Kayamkulam, 105
Keay, J., 259
Kejariwal, O., 258
Kelwa, 265
Kempe Gowda, 335
Kerala, 478, 73, 80
Keavadsa, 21832
Ketelaar, J., 56
Kha Khan, 52
Khajuraho, 218
Khan Jahan, 166
Khan Jahan Khan Lodi, 185
Khataks, 182
Khirilchis, 181
Khoja Anton, 147
Khoja Barsick Arathoon, 1345, 143,
147
Khoja Gregory (see Gurgin Khan)
Khoja Minas Elias, 135, 147
Khoja Petrus, 1345, 138, 143, 147,
154
Khoqand, 215
Khorasan, 23, 213
Khudabanda Khan Bangash, 208
Khugianis, 181
Khwaja Bayazid Ansari, 179
Khyber Pass, 181
King, A., 291
Kipling, R., 16, 266, 277
Kistaba Rana, 85
Klerk de Reus, G., 1223, 125
Kohat, 181
Kol, D., 119, 23, 70, 73, 85, 188,
235, 242, 2778
Kol, G., 2 n. 4
Kolis, 90, 94, 98
Koller, H., 10714
Konkan, 85, 889, 978, 100, 102
Kooiman, D., 245, 233
Kora, 167
Koraes, A., 260, 268 n. 34
Kottayam, 105
Ka, 21821, 2902
Kruijtzer, G., 67
kshatryas, 78, 923, 272 n. 41, 278
Kumbalghar, 282
Kunbis, 802
Kurram, 181
Kua, 2235, 2278
Kuasthal, 223
Kuavat, 2245, 227
Lahore, 47, 57, 634, 1989, 348, 350
Lakshmi Naik, 98
Landars, 181
Landor, W., 2367
Lannoy, M. de, 19, 212, 105
Lawrence, W., 276
Leask, W., 268
Leninist-Stalinist, 298
Leslorant, A., 212, 1056, 1135
Lewis, M., 256
liberalism, 267, 297
Lobha, 221
Loch, J., 235
Locke, J., 267
Lodis, 23, 159, 1612, 164, 166, 168,
1702, 1745, 178, 185, 207,
3201, 332
Lohanis, 167, 169
London, 17, 25, 121, 2356, 239,
2412, 251, 253, 255, 271, 276,
342, 344
Louisiana, 256
Lucknow, 25, 1634, 169, 20810,
242, 2445
Lushington, 148
Ltzen, 341
Lyall, A., 276
Lytton, Lord, 273
Macaulay, Th., 264
Machalahara, 228
Machilipatnam, 121
MacMunn, G., 274
Madhukara ha, 217, 219
Madras, 32, 34, 120, 251, 276
365
Madurai, 335
Mahadaji Malik, 100
Maharana Bhim Singh, 254
Mahatab Rai, 155 (see also Seth
brothers)
Mah, 113
Mahmud Khan Bangash, 2067
Maitreya, A., 143, 1512 n. 34
Mala Parbhu, 89
Malabar, 212, 35, 48, 10515, 1234
Malaccan peninsula, 32
Malay(sia), 37, 45, 50
Maldon, J., 249
Malik Ain Khan Bangash, 179
Malik Kafur, 334
Malik-Miris, 181
Malleson, G., 143, 1578
Malwa, 174, 197, 2001, 204, 257
mamlks, 234, 187, 190, 195, 2135
Man Singh, 280
Mandovi, 789
Mandu, 176
Manickulal Verma, 281
Mappilas, 35
Marathas, 12, 26, 7680, 82, 858, 90,
93, 96100, 103, 120, 197, 2001,
203, 208, 252, 254, 2567, 259,
268, 271, 339
Margar Johannes Khalanthar, 1389,
143, 14850, 1524, 1567
Martanda Varma, 105
Marxism, 288, 291, 2968
Masih al-Zaman, 5766
Mataram, 44, 118
Mathur, 2901
Mau ( Jhansi), 78, 13
Mau (Rashidabad), 17980, 186, 190,
1923, 1967, 208
Maulana Masood Azhar, 350
Maurya, 27, 332
Mayapur, 128
McLuhan, M., 308
Mecca, 1756
Mediterranean, 2930, 36
Mehta, U., 267
Melaka, 323
Mello e Castro, Caetana de, 789
Mendona Benvenido, J. de, 100
Menezes da Silva, J., 90
Meos, 256
Mercer, G., 256
Mesopotamia, 327
Mewar, 25, 252, 2547, 259, 262,
2656, 26872, 2756, 280
Micawber, Mr., 233
366
Ochterlony, D., 254, 255 n. 4, 256,
257 n. 8, 266, 270
Ogerdias, C., 120
Opium Society, 22, 119, 131
Orakzais, 1812
Och, 2179, 227
Orissa, 47, 120, 134, 139, 330
Ostend Company, 121
Ottomans, 2689, 272, 336
Oxford, 237, 260
Pacama, 2258
Pakistan, 27, 305, 34351
Palembang, 118
Panchmahal, 147
Panipat, 206, 336, 339
Panjab, 15, 164, 203, 3446
Pann, 218
Paraurma, 290
Paris, 268, 317
Pathans, 867, 90, 1834, 187, 190,
193, 195, 2012, 2056, 2089, 211,
216 (see also Afghans)
Patna, 23, 1178, 121, 128, 138, 142,
1468, 153, 1556, 175
Pegu, 44
Pelsaert, F., 7, 9, 13, 34, 40, 67
Perlin, F., 55
Persians, 10, 23, 65, 96, 135, 171,
176, 187, 189, 2045, 215, 218,
260, 268, 2712, 334, 336 (see also
Iranis)
Persian Gulf, 334
Peru, 308
Peshawar, 181
Peshwa, 102, 257
Pilakhna, 167
Pilibhit, 169
Pindar, 320
Pindaris, 97
Plassey, 22, 120, 123, 129, 135,
1445, 1556, 252
Ponda, 74, 79, 87, 91, 95, 98101
Pope, 308
Portuguese (Portugal), 21, 29, 323,
4951, 56, 69104
postmodernity, 5, 18, 286, 28992,
298, 321
Praas do Norte, 7385
Prakash, O., 12, 48, 524, 118, 123
Prataparudra, 335
Prinsep, J., 259
Protestant, 80, 296
367
368
Strachey, R., 256
Streusand, D., 13
Subrahmanyam, S., 48, 54
Suez, 243, 344
Su, 18, 20, 234, 412, 160, 164,
166, 171, 175, 198, 214
Sulaiman Mountains, 181
Sultan Buhlul Lodi, 164, 173, 175,
178
Sultanpur, 1646, 16970, 178
Sumatra, 32, 118
Sumroo, 139, 143, 14950, 152, 155
Sunda, 76, 80, 87, 96, 100
Sura Savant, 98
Surat, 21, 334, 47, 4952, 5466,
117, 144, 305
Surrey, 241
Surs, 8, 159, 170, 217
Suryavarman I, 330
Suti, 150, 152
Swarupchand, 155 (see also Seth
brothers)
Swiss (Switserland), 271, 340
Sylhet, 41
Syria, 38, 327, 336
Taillefert, L., 11920, 155
Taliban, 346
Tamilnadu, 47, 53
Tanjavur, 121
Taqi Khan, 1489, 152
Tarai, 203
Tatar Khan Lodi, 172
television, 26, 285, 3089, 317,
3213
Telicherry, 80
Tennyson, A., 261 n. 17
Thackerey, W., 264
Thedens, J., 111
Therborn, G., 292
Thermopylae, 268, 271, 2756
Thomason, J., 16
Thomaz, L., 6970
Timur, 332
Tirumala Nayak, 335
Tocqueville, A. de, 251
Tod, J., 25182
Tolstoy, L., 264
Toulmin, S., 5 n. 8
Toynbee, A., 315
Travancore, 21, 80, 1058, 1112,
114
Trollope, A., 264
Tulsidas, 17, 19
369
370
Zabardast Khan, 77, 103
Zia ul-Haq, 3478
Ziegler, N., 189, 277 n. 57
Zimbaulim, 74, 87, 1001