The folly of chivalry

IS it better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees - or is it better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees? This conundrum, though jocularly posed in Catch 22, is really no laughing matter. The sensible answer to the question is of course that life has to be chosen in all cases, even if it means living on your knees for a while, because life gives you the chance to rise to your feet again, while death annuls the future altogether.

Chivalric code, however, insists that one should prefer death to living on one's knees. This was what the Rajputs generally followed. And it doomed their political future. The Marathas were wiser. Shivaji never engaged in battles he could not possibly win, and had no hesitation to use stratagems and subterfuges - which the Rajputs would have disdained as Dishonourable - to gain his goals. The Rajputs fought for honour. The Marathas fought to win.

Chivalric honour was actually a military liability, which often turned battles into confused personal duels, without any common strategy, states B.N.S. Yadava in the book under review. Aurangzeb was deeply scornful of what he called "the crass stupidity of the Hindustanis (Rajputs) who would part with their heads but not leave their positions (in battle)." Knowing when to fight and when to yield is the essence of success, in life as well as in war. In fact, even among the Rajputs, their most successful leaders - Rana Pratap for instance - fled from the battlefield time and again so they could live to fight another day.

The state of the army - its weapons and tactics, as well as its morale - is of fundamental importance in shaping the history of a nation. Yet, curiously, this aspect of history is generally neglected by modern historians. This book is an effort to remedy the shortcoming. It is not, however, an original work, but a set of essays culled from various books published between 1940 and 1997. It therefore lacks structural unity and completeness, though an excellent introduction by the editors remedies this defect to some extent.

The book opens with a chapter by M. Habib titled "The Urban Revolution in Northern India", which, though it has several valuable insights, is marred by its tendency to push arguments beyond their reasonable limits, and to force Marxist theory on tenuous facts, as in his incredible assertion that "the so-called Ghurian conquest was really a revolution of Indian city-labour led by the Ghurian Turk." Similarly, he is clearly propagandising when he claims "the Delhi Sultanate was no more Muslim than the British Empire has been Christian".

Rewriting of history by radicals is as pernicious as rewriting of history by reactionaries. The oppression of Hindus by Muslims rulers was, we know, more a matter of verbal excess (by court chroniclers eulogising their masters) than of actual practice. Still, there was oppression, and it would be dishonest to gloss over it. Rather, we should see the oppression in its proper perspective, and note that it resulted as much from the attitude of the victor against the vanquished as of the Muslim against the Hindu. Shivite and Vaishnavite adversaries were also guilty of similar outrages against each other, though not on the same scale. In most of these cases, politics was the hand that oppressed, religion only the medium of oppression.

Habib is more credible in explaining the reasons for the large- scale conversion of Indians to Islam, as a means of escaping from the prison of the Hindu caste system. Further, Muslim rule tended to subvert the caste system, by treating all Hindus as one class, by throwing open all professions to all classes, and by allowing people of all castes to move into urban centres. These, rather than force or overt inducement, accounted for most of the conversions. As Habib notes, "no document proving any organised religious propaganda by the Mussalmans during this period has yet been unearthed."

Among the other topics in the book, I found the chapter on "Armed Religious Ascetics in Northern India" by W. G. Orr particularly interesting, as this material is hard to come by elsewhere. The armed ascetics - the Nagas - seem to have been originally defensive brigades, but some of these groups turned themselves into marauding bands during the political chaos in the 18th Century, initially exacting supplies in the name of charity and later taking to open brigandage, indulging in "violence and pillage on an extensive scale." The Nagas belonged to different sects, and some of them practised "dark and fearsome rites," including human sacrifice, freely consumed alcohol and meat and indulged in marijuana and opium. Sometimes the sects fought pitched battles against each other. "Never have I seen yogis like these," wrote Kabir. "Shall I call such men ascetics or bandits?" Religion for them was merely a cloak to cover their self- indulgent and wild lifestyle.

Easily the best chapter in the book is "The Polity and the Peasantry" by Kolff. Hindu caste system did to some extent (but not entirely) limit professional soldiering to the Kshatriyas, but in pre-modern times - till the British demilitarised rural society - Indian peasants usually went about armed, and were prone to violence and rebellion, as Kolff shows. The peaceable villager of the poetic idyll did not exist in reality. What is happening in Bihar today is not development, but a reversion to our old practices.

ABRAHAM ERALY

Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia: 1000-1800, 2001, edited by Jos J. L. Gommans and Dirk H. A. Kolff, Oxford, p. 395, Rs. 675.

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