The Indus Saga

Aitzaz Ahsan

Description

The Indus region, comprising the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent (now Pakistan), has always had its distinct identity - racially, ethnically, linguistically and culturally. In the last five thousand years, this region has been a part of India, politically, for only five hundred years. Pakistan, then, is no 'artificial' state conjured up by the disaffected Muslim elite of British India. Aitzaz Ahsan surveys the history of Indus - as he refers to this region - right from the time of the Harappan civilization to the era of the British Raj, concluding with independence and the creation of Pakistan. Ahsan's message is aimed both at Indians still nostalgic about 'undivided 'India and their Pakistani compatriots who narrowly tend to define their identity by their 'un-Indianness'.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Pakistán
• South Asia
• Ancient history
• Indus River
• Ancient
• History
• Asia
• Pakistan
• Harappa
• India
• Mohenjo-daro
• Civilization

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940739
• Langue: English

Extrait

About the book
The Indus region, comprising the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent (now Pakistan), has always had its distinct identity - racially, ethnically, linguistically and culturally. In the last five thousand years, this region has been a part of India, politically, for only five hundred years. Pakistan, then, is no ‘artificial’ state conjured up by the disaffected Muslim elite of British India.
Aitzaz Ahsan surveys the history of Indus - as he refers to this region - right from the time of the Harappan civilization to the era of the British Raj, concluding with independence and the creation of Pakistan. Ahsan’s message is aimed both at Indians still nostalgic about ‘undivided’ India and their Pakistani compatriots who narrowly tend to define their identity by their ‘un-Indianness’.
About the author
Aitzaz Ahsan comes from a background steeped in politics, being the third generation from his family to serve as an elected member of a legislative assembly. He is a member of the Pakistan People’s Party and has served as the minister of law, justice, interior and education in the federal government between 1988 and 1993. Elected to the senate of Pakistan in 1994, he was, successively, the leader of the House and the leader of the Opposition between the years 1996 and 1999.
After his early education at Aitchison College and the Government College in Lahore, he studied law at Cambridge and was called to the bar at Grays’ Inn in 1967. He is a senior advocate in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He is also an indefatigable human rights activist and a founder vice-president of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. He has been incarcerated under arbitrary detention laws many times by military and authoritarian regimes. During one such prolonged detention, he wrote The Indus Saga .

ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2015
First published in Pakistan by Oxford University Press in 1996
First published in India in 2005 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright © Aitzaz Ahsan, 2005
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
eISBN: 978-93-5194-073-9
Cover Design: Arati Subramanyam
All rights reserved. This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published.
Dedicated to my parents Mohammad Ahsan (Alig.) and Rashida Ahsan from whom, early in my life, I learnt to worship my soil and to love its people
Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface
Part One: The Two Regions 2000 BC to AD 1800
Introduction
1 The Priests of Prehistory
2 The Man on Horseback
3 Iron, Krishna and Buddha Destroy the Tribe
4 Porus: An Indus Version
5 Pax Mauryana: The First Universal State
6 The Oxus and the Indus
7 The Romance of Raja Rasalu
8 Feudalization and the First Feudal State
9 An Arab Visitor
10 More Men on Horseback
11 The Second Feudal State
12 Turbulent North, Peaceful South and Panipat
13 The Second Universal State
14 Resistance, Opportunism and Consumerism
15 Bhakti, Nanak and the Sufis
Part Two: The Two Worlds AD 1600 to AD 1897
Introduction
16 The Europe that Came to India
17 The India that Awaited Europe
18 Uneasy Heads on the Peacock Throne
19 Tombs, Ostentation and Land Tenure
20 Sea Power and Military Tactics
21 The Sikhs and the Subsidiary States
22 1857
23 The Third Universal State
Part Three: The Two Nations AD 1757 to AD 1947
Introduction
24 The Character of the Hindu Muslim Divide
25 Sonar Bangla
26 The Plunder
27 The Famine and Settlement
28 The Economic Divide
29 Whither the Muslims?
30 The Sons of the Indus Fight
31 Parting of the Ways
32 Towards Partition
Bibliography
Acknowledgements

H ad M.J. Akbar not visited Pakistan to witness the Indo-Pak cricket series in 2004, this edition of The Indus Saga would not have been possible. And had Pramod Kapoor not come here a few months later, it would never have been in the reader’s hands today. Both encouraged me and helped take the project forward.
Of course my wife, Bushra, has always been a source of strength and inspiration, and our children, Saman, Ali and Zaynab, have encouraged me to indulge my fancies in pursuits other than my profession of law and my commitment to politics.
Needless to say, I alone remain responsible for all the flaws and faults in the analysis and conclusions contained in the book.
Preface

O n 4 June 2005, Lal Krishna Advani visited the mausoleum of the founder of Pakistan in Karachi. In the visitors’ book he inscribed the following words: ‘The Indian freedom struggle describes Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (as) an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. His address to the first constituent assembly of Pakistan in August 1947 is a classic, forceful espousal of a secular state in which every citizen should be free to pursue his own religion. The state shall make no distinction between one and another citizen on the ground of faith. My respectful homage to this great man.’
The inscription raised a storm on both sides of the Indo-Pak divide. On the Pakistani side there was outrage on why the vision of Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam, had been described as secular. On the Indian side extremists took umbrage at why Jinnah, the ‘communalist’ had been referred to as a secularist. Both sides objected to the secular credentials attributed to Barrister Mohammad Ali Jinnah. But, oddly, both attributed different meanings to the same word: secular.
On the Pakistani side the word ‘secular’ is a slur. To a large body of Pakistanis a secular state means one that is against religion: a state at war with religion, any religion; a state that prohibits the practice of religion. How could Pakistan, an ‘Islamic’ state, have been conceived as a secular state?
On the Indian side, no one who considered the Muslims as a separate ‘nation’ could have been described as secular. Nor could a state conceived by such a one be considered a secular state. To be secular, a state had itself to be neutral among faiths and have none of its own.
Jinnah was misunderstood on both sides of the border. So, for once, was Advani. But that was only natural because over the last six decades neither side has really understood, or even truly tried to understand, the other. Leaders, intelligence agencies, military establishments and even the media on both sides have spent long years demonizing each other. Even the film industry came on board with mega blockbusters devoted to proving the neighbour as a sworn and treacherous enemy.
And each side had ample self-created justification to demonize the other.
Two generations of Pakistanis have been told that their very identity was their ‘un-Indianness’: banish this thought from the mind and Pakistan will collapse. Moreover, the Pakistani is Muslim and the Indian is Hindu. Period. That alone was the rationale of the partition of the subcontinent. But even if valid, being ‘un-Indian’ is a manifestly incomplete answer to any question about identity. It only purports to state what the Pakistani is not. It does not address the issue as to what indeed he is. And incomplete answers always raise fresh questions. The Pakistani does not necessarily have to be an Indian, but he has to be somebody. Who is that somebody? Moreover the smug answer ascribing a singular role in the Partition to the differences between Hindus and Muslims fails to deal with the fact that the number of Muslims in India is greater than the population of Pakistan.
The extremists in the Sangh Parivar who unsuccessfully pushed Advani to resign as the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party are equally off the mark about the Indo-Pak divide. But they are not alone. Even the official reaction of the Congress party, was one of surprise and disappointment at Advani’s attributing secular credentials to Jinnah. In India, the opinion has almost unanimously been that Jinnah was a ‘communalist’ and hence cannot be described as secular. Moreover Jinnah cannot be forgiven the sacrilege of having divided the revered and indivisible Akhand Bharat. And if the Partition is justified on the basis of a distinct regional identity and not by religion alone, then other regions of India might also use that argument to achieve their separatist aims. The indivisibility of India had to be raised to the level of a romantic idea and the creation of Pakistan shown as an unnatural aberration.
The romance of the subcontinent’s indivisible unity is, however, neither new nor exclusive to the Sangh Parivar. It was the very brief that Congress had pursued in the period that led up to the Partition. And it had been most competently articulated by none other than India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Nehru was one of that rare breed of political leaders who did not depend only upon the spoken word. And his writings are by no means insubstantial. Nehru could take an overview of the broad movements of world history. Glimpses of World History, which consists of a series of letters he wrote to his daughter Indira from his prison cell, gives us an idea of the breadth of his vision. In it he has analysed, with competence and learning, such diverse subjects as the Greek city-states, the village republics of ancient India, the rise of the European cities, the discovery of the sea routes, the Malaysian empires of Madjapahit and M