The many voices of a history
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This book, an attempt to place each narrative on the history of Somanatha in context, also suggests a different history from the one that has been projected through the last two centuries. Exclusive extracts from ROMILA THAPAR's book, to be released later this month.
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IN 1026, Mahmud of Ghazni raided the temple of Somanatha, plundered its wealth and broke the idol. The received opinion is that this event marked a crystallizing of attitudes, both of the plundered and the plunderers, and these remained antagonistic to each other from that moment on. I decided to explore the aftermath of this event to track what crystallized if it did, how the event was recorded, and whether the perception of the event changed. Of interest to me also was the historiography of these narratives through the representation of this and other events, as well as the later construction of what were thought to be the memories of the event.
The intention of this study is to explore the inter-relationship between an event and the historiography that grows around it by placing the narratives in a historical context. An event occurs, and it slowly becomes encrusted with narratives about what happened. Sometimes the claim is made that such narratives have been constructed on the basis of initial memories, or that they encapsulate what once was a memory, or that the historiography reflects what are believed to be facets of memory. The historian cannot restrict the historical analyses only to the event and the way in which it is being viewed in the present. The intervening stages of the creation of narratives around the event or an aftermath that ignores the event, have also to be investigated. The study becomes one of observing the processes by which the intervening stages are established and how these influence the eventual perception of the event ...
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... My intention in this study is not an attempt at a detailed reconstruction of what happened, but rather to see the sources as presenting various perspectives, either directly or by implication, and to search for clues as to how the event was perceived. Such an assessment results in a different reading of the event from that which has been current so far. It emphasizes a number of significant questions: who were the groups actually involved and affected, if the temple did in fact continuously alternate between rebuilding and destruction? What were the relations between these groups and did these change after each such activity? Was it a matter of Muslims desecrating Hindu temples, or were there other motives? Were such acts in some cases deliberately exaggerated for purposes other than receiving religious acclaim? Did they not involve a variety of changing relationships between the two and among the two or more than the two? Other underlying tensions between groups should not be ignored. Such a method of examining these questions can be applied to parallel situations, sometimes involving temples, at other times relating to inter-religious activities of a popular nature.
In analysing the various perspectives on Somanatha after the raid of Mahmud, I would like to explore the idea that the historiography and the narratives that grow out of an event are significant to an understanding of the historical complexity of how the event and the space where it occurs is remembered or forgotten by a range of people. The desecration of a temple in this case, and attitudes towards the memories of such an event, actual or deliberately constructed, need to be examined. The event itself is not being questioned here, but its occurrence does raise further question. Among the more pertinent are how a historian assesses its impact and how the event is represented in various sources, contemporary and later. The later sources may extend to a millennium after the event. These, in turn, raise still further questions regarding the manner in which interpretations change. The validity of using this event as germinal to antagonism between the Hindu and Muslim communities as projected in modern times, and as a conventional explanation, also requires discussion ...
... I shall discuss six broad categories of sources: the largest in number and the one that has been dominant up to now are the narratives and chronicles in Persian and a few in Arabic, written largely in the context of the Turko-Persian politics and culture prevalent in the Ghaznavid domain and later in northern India; the inscriptions from Somanatha and its vicinity written mainly in Sanskrit: Jaina biographies and chronicles, and epics from Rajput courts; the perception of Mahmud at the popular level in a largely oral tradition; the British intervention via a debate in the House of Commons in the nineteenth century; and the Indian nationalist reconstruction of the event. My intention is not to include all possible sources, but to indicate the variety that needs to be consulted in the kind of assessment that I am making ...
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... My purpose is less to analyse this range of sources in detail, and more to set out the span and comment on the variations. It is in some ways an exercise in seeing how a historical relationship can be pursued among such sources and the extent to which the versions are apposite to the creation of what are believed to be memories. There is no uncertainty about the event having happened. The ambiguity lies in the evidence and the degree to which it can be seen as the politics of representation, both of earlier times and of the present. The demythologizing of the aftermath of the event can be one-consequence of juxtaposing the sources and treating the information they provide in a comparative manner.
These different sources, barring the excavation, have been known since the nineteenth century but have not been juxtaposed and seen as a commentary on the aftermath of the event. This is in part due to the dominance of the narrative from the Persian sources and partly due to the erroneous periodization of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim and British in which the Hindu period was studied only on the basis of Sanskrit texts, the Muslim period on the basis of Persian texts, and the British by using English language sources. It was believed that the use of Sanskrit texts did not proceed much beyond AD 1200 when the Hindu period was supposed to end, leaving the period from AD 1200, which was said to inaugurate Muslim rule, to those reading Persian sources. This illogicality in the understanding of Indian history ensured a piecemeal history in which links and connections could not be made. Nor did it encourage juxtaposing various kinds of sources and assessing their interconnections and information. Periodization tends to freeze the understanding of a time-bound history into a set of attitudes. Fortunately for the reconstruction of Indian history, this approach is now changing. The emphases on multiple sources and their juxtaposition, oral traditions, methods of analysis highlighting cultural and economic history and the social role of religion, are encouraging historians to move away from simplistic monocasual explanations to exploring the complexities of a range of causes in a changing context. This provides better insights into the past ...
... Recent analyses of these sources point towards a different reading of the event and its aftermath from that which has been current so far. It raises many new questions: did varying groups in Indian society react in varying ways to the event; was the destruction of temples just a matter of religious hostility? Were accounts of such destruction exaggerated for political reasons or were they accurate? Were there in fact monolithic communities labelled Hindu and Muslim or were there variant and changing relationships among a multiplicity of communities which did not see themselves as part of a monolith? Seeking answers to such questions does not simplify the process of analysing historical events. But even the asking of such questions is essential in order to move away from generalizations based on mono-casual explanations that tell us virtually nothing about the past. They merely allow us to impose on the past our requirements of the present and thus obfuscate the reading of the past ...
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... I have tried to show how each set of narratives turn the focus of what Somanatha symbolizes: the occasion for the projection of the iconoclast and champion of Islam; the assertion of the superiority of Jainism over Shaivism; the centrality of the profits of trade subordinating other considerations; confrontations in the politics of Rajput and Turkish courts; perceptions of the event in the larger society of northern India; colonial interpretations of Indian society as having always been an antagonistic duality of Hindus and Muslims; religious nationalisms — both Hindu and Muslim — appropriating the colonial interpretation in formulating their versions of the event; Hindu nationalism contesting the contemporary secularization of Indian society. But these are not discrete foci. They do require that the understanding of the event should be historically contextual, multifaceted and aware of the ideological structures implicit in the narratives.
I have tried to suggest that the event of Mahmud's raid on the temple of Somanatha did not create a dichotomy. There were varying representations, both overt and hidden. A deeper investigation of these representations could point to concerns quite other than the ones to which we have given priority so far, both in this and similar events in Indian history. An assessment of these may provide us with more accurate and more sensitive insights into the Indian past.
Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, Romila Thapar, Penguin Viking, Rs. 375.
Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor in History, JNU, New Delhi. She is also an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
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