108 – History Making mistakes or Mistakes making history

108 – History Making Mistakes or Mistakes making history

I picked up a strange book called ‘100 mistakes that changed history’ by Bill Fanwcett last week. The core premise of the book can be well understood from the following excerpts:

“History- making mistakes,  or perhaps more accurately ‘Mistakes making history’….much of history happened not because of careful planning by great leaders but because of mistakes made by them and others….whether in a war or in the bedroom, the great mistakes of the past are fun to read about…it can be reassuring that so many have blundered so often in the past…..

The book clearly has a bias towards Greco-Roman history with each of those mistakes ending with a rhetorical question – things could have been different had that event not panned out the way it did- had it not been for the mistake, oversight or error in judgement of the protagonist.

Two things cross my mind as I devour page after page of that anthology of mistakes– First, how would a purely Indian list of mistakes look like and second does this theory applies to individual histories (for example one can try to chronicle ‘10 mistakes that shaped my life’). This Musing is dedicated to the pursuit of the first thought and I will talk about the second next week.

I am not a student of Indian history – in the sense that I have not dedicated much time in the pursuit of academic acquisition of it – however I am fascinated by history in general. I wish school had done a better job in fuelling my romance with the subject. It is only through unplanned and sporadic flirting with the subject that I have developed a soft corner for it, particularly in the light of a growing realisation that ‘those who do not study history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past’. As a complete amateur here are some events/mistakes that i believe changed India and left me with the wonder of how would things could have been had those events not happened the way they did.

#1. India has been shaped by two broad influx of people at different times - the Aryans and the Moguls. There are theories and counter theories about the origin, intent, and effects of these two into the subcontinent, but there is complete unanimity in one truth – the civilisation called India, the complexity of races, tribes, kingdoms, lineages, the notion of pure and impure, the concept of who ‘belongs’ and who does not’ is a product of that fact that so many chose to come here – and today it really does not matter who came here as what and when. Who is a ‘native’ of the Indian soil depends upon what is your cut off date. I wonder sometimes, how would India of today look like had no one from outside ever came here? Would we still have its cultural diversity, its linguistic span, its ritualistic rainbow, its architectural splendour, its historical heritage? Would there be an India, the way we know it, at all? Would some of the issues that face us today be present at all?

#2. There are many hypotheses as to why India has been a cradle of so many belief systems, religions or philosophies. Two of them appeal to me the most – First, the very reasons so many diverse set immigrated in search of land, glory or gold (as enumerated above) and then chose to settle down instead of behaving only as mercenary plunderers, led to intermixing of beliefs, cultural nuances and ‘Gods’. The second is a broad set of reformist religions which arose as a response to the dogmatic, ritualistic, brahmnical domination of centuries, which whatever their exalted origin, had deteriorated into oppressive tyrannies in the name of religion. The Indian subcontinent became, in some sense, a breeding ground for an alternative solution, in mans search for salvation. Thus emerged Budhism, Jainism, the entire Bhakti-Sufi lineage like Sikhism so on and so forth. Some even argue, while political and military conquest by the Moguls’ enabled spread of Islam in India, but that in no way alone can explain its subsequent adoption and spread. Surely the social conditions here in India provided good enough reasons and favourable opportunities for the new religions/belief systems to find ready followers who were disillusioned by the prevalent system and hence were willing to experiment with alternatives. I wonder so many times, had our society not been so rigid, or ritualistic, or oppressive in its religious practices then – had God been more accessible to the common man in the context of organised religion – would India be different today? Would there be so many beliefs, so many religions – each promising its adherents the elusive salvation – and most importantly would there be have so many religious fault lines?

#3 I experience complex emotions every time I read or think of the partition of India, but ironical it may sound, I am mostly fascinated by it. Leaving the chronicling and the analysis of the origins or causes(s) or listing the actors who were responsible for the most bloody and gory human displacement, partition of India left its people with memories, sensitivities, world views and attitudes thoroughly changed. The angst that its people on both sides went through has inspired so much literature, so much poetry, so much catharsis in so many ways – and yet the memories or the consequences still refuses to fade. I wonder how the cookie would have crumbled, had partition would not have happened. How would an unified India look like, how much more the human potential would have created (much more than the adolescent fantasy of how great the cricket team would look like) had it not been truncated. Would the polity be different, would our popular discourse be any different, would our geo-political position and situation be different, would our music be different. Would India be different?

The universe of could-have-been is exotic and we all romanticise it. I am no exception. I keep romanticising how this absurd but eminently sweet idea called INDIA could-have-been.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Guru