"All histories are elaborate efforts at mythmaking. Therefore, when we submit to
histories about us written by others, we submit to their myths about us as well.
Mythmaking, like naming, is a token of having power. Submitting to others' myths
about us is a sign that we are without power. After the historical work of Dharampal,
the scope for mythmaking about the past of Indian society is now considerably reduced.
If we must continue to live by myths, however, it is far better we choose to live by those
of our own making rather than by those invented by others for their own purposes, whether
English or Japanese. That much at least we owe ourselves as an independent society and
nation." - Claude Alvares
Dharampal Ji's unmaking of the English-generated history of Indian society has in fact
created a serious enough gap today in the discipline. The legitimacy of English or
colonial dominated perceptions and biases about Indian society has been grievously
undermined, but the academic tradition has been unable to take up the challenge of
generating an organized indigenous view to take its place. The materials for a far
more authentic history of science and technology in India are indeed now available
as a result of his pioneering work, but the competent scholar who can handle it all
in one neat canvas has yet to arrive. One recent new work that should be mentioned
in this connection is Helaine Selin's Encyclopaedia of Non-Western Science,
Technology and Medicine (Kluwer, Holland), which indeed takes note of Dharampal's
findings. Till such time as the challenge is taken up, however, we will continue to
replicate, uncritically, in the minds of generation after generation, the British
or European sponsored view of Indian society and its institutions. How can any
society survive, let alone create, on the basis of its borrowed images?
According to Dharampal, the British purpose in India, perhaps after long deliberation
during the 17th century was never to attempt on any scale the settlement of the people
of Britain or Europe in India. It was felt that in most regions of India, because of its
climate, temperature range, gifted, industrious and dense population, the settling of
the people of Europe would serve little purpose.
Therefore the purpose was defined as bringing to Britain and Europe, surplus products of
the varied industry of the people of India, and the taxes imposed on this industry.
Such a proposal, in fact, was very clearly put forward around 1780 by Prof. Adam
Ferguson of Edinburgh. Ferguson was a professor of moral philosophy. (Interestingly. he
is also regarded as the founder of British sociology.)
Dharampal found that for long periods in the late 18th and the 19th centuries, the
tax on land in many areas exceeded the total agricultural production of very fertile
land. This was particularly so in the areas of the Madras Presidency (comprising
current Tamilnadu, districts of coastal Andhra. some districts of Karnataka and
Malabar). The consequences of the policy were easy to predict: in the Madras
Presidency, one third of the most fertile land went out of cultivation between the
period 1800-1850. In fact, as early as 1804, the Governor of the Madras Presidency
wrote to his masters (the President of the Board of Commissioners) in London : -
"We have paid a great deal of attention to the revenue management in this country...the
general tenor of my opinion is, that we have rode the country too hard, and the sequence
is, that it is in a state of the most lamentable poverty. Great oppression is I fear
exercised too generally in the collection of the Revenues."
Of course, Dharampal also found within the same archives, information about the Indian
civil resistance in various regions of India in the early stages of British rule, like
the one in Varanasi region around 1810-11 and in Canara around 1830 and how they were
contained. But such events are not taken note of in the formal record as deliberate
policy. Even petitions against grievances, though invited, would not be office recorded,
unless, the wording of the petition, conveyed a sense of the petitioner's humility and of
his (or her) limitless respect for authority.
Excerpts from one such rejected petition against the tax imposed in Varanasi highlight
this : - "...former sooltauns never extended the rights of Government (commonly called malgoozaree)
to the habitations of their subjects acquired by them by descent or transfer. It is this account
that in selling estates the habitations proprietors are excepted from the sales. Therefore, the
operation of this tax infringes upon the rights of the community, which is contrary to
the first principles justice..."
"...It is difficult to find means of subsistence and the duties, court fees, transit
and town duties which have increased tenfold, afflict and affect everyone rich and poor,
and this tax, like salt scattered on a wound, is a cause of pain and depression to
everyone, both Hindoo and Musulman: - let it be taken into consideration that as a
consequence of these imposts the price of provisions within these ten years
increased sixteen fold. In such case how is it possible, for us who have no means of
earning a livelihood to subsist ?..."
By their methods of extortion and other similar means, the British were able to smash,
Indian rural life and society by about 1820-1830. Around the same period, the extensive
Indian manufactures met a similar fate. Because of deliberate British policy, the famed
Indian village communities so eloquently described by Thomas Metcalfe around 1830, and
by Karl Marx in the 1850s, had mostly ceased to exist.
Similar comments could be made about the narratives on Indian science and technology.
Initially they were desired for their contemporary relevance and usefulness to the
advancement or correction of their British counterparts. But soon after the British
began to rule and control Indian life and society, the continuity of Indian knowledge
and practice seemed to them a threat. Therefore it was something to be put aside so
that it crumbled or decayed. Dharampal found that such a programme of 'making extinct'
was contrived in practically every sphere of human activity, including the manufactures
of cotton textiles, the production of Indian steel, and even the Indian practice of
inoculation against small pox as early as A.D. 1800.
A similar fate awaited the extensive network of Indian schools and institutions of
higher learning when they began to be surveyed in the 1820s and 1830s. Ironically, it
is mainly through the British archival records that one becomes aware of the extensive
nature of the education network, as well as its speedy decay in the Madras and Bengal
Presidency, and somewhat later in the Presidencies of Bombay and in the Punjab. Of
course, the view, which we get from such archival material is splintered and not
integrated. But the indicators in themselves are of great value. They also provide us
glimpses of pre-British life and of aspects of India's society of which we had lost
track from about A.D. 1850 when society was broken up and sup- pressed, and an imposed
alien system of education made us ignore and forget the innumerable accomplishments of
our people.