From Kohinoor to Goddess Annapurna, why some stolen objects return and others don’t

 

The records of the Archaeological Survey of India show that the government has been able to retrieve 40 art objects between 2014 and 2020. However, demands for the return of objects like the Kohinoor and the Amravati marbles have been turned down.

An 18th century idol of Goddess Annapurna, stolen from India about a century back, will soon be making its way back to the country from Canada. The statue, holding a bowl of kheer in hand, had once adorned a temple on the riverbanks of Varanasi, and was stolen by lawyer Norman McKenzie sometime in the early 20th century. Since then, it has been part of the McKenzie art gallery collection at the University of Regina, Canada. Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the idol would be repatriated by the Canadian government. In a statement, University of Regina’s Vice-Chancellor Thomas Chase said the act of repatriation will help “overcome the damaging legacy of colonialism wherever possible”.

“One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: loot,” writes historian William Dalrymple in his most recent work, ‘The anarchy: The relentless rise of the East India Company’. The word which had originated in the plains of northern India, entered British vocabulary by the 18th century. Incidentally, that was also the time when hundreds of artefacts, paintings, coins, manuscripts and much else were shipped across to England by colonial officers.

Dalrymple goes on to describe the colossal amount of loot made by the first governor of the Bengal presidency Robert Clive kept in the Powis Castle in Wales. “There are more Mughal artefacts stacked in this private house in the Welsh countryside than are on display in any one place in India… The riches include hookahs of varnish gold inlaid empurpled ebony, superbly inscribed Badakhshan spinels and jeweled daggers; gleaming rubies the colour of pigeon’s blood, and scatterings of lizard-green emeralds,” he writes.But colonial loot was systematic and made to look lawful. With the Independence of the country, similar plunder continued, but now it became an act of crime. Names like Subhash Kapoor, Vijay Nanda, Deenadayalan continue to be investigated in connection with millions of dollars worth of smuggled cultural heritage. “The primary difference is in the sense of ownership. In the pre-independence period when the colonisers were doing it, there was a rhetoric of victory. It wasn’t really looting as much as a sense of entitlement,” says Samayita Banerjee, research scholar in History at Ashoka University, who has been doing extensive research on heritage conservation. “Post Independence it becomes a matter of theft as there exist laws to protect antiquities.”

Over the years, thousands of artefacts of cultural importance to India have found themselves in museums and exhibitions abroad. “UNESCO has estimated that more than 50,000 art objects were smuggled out of India over the decade 1979-1989 alone,” writes international law expert Jeanette Greenfield in her book, ‘The return of international treasures’. In recent years, repatriation of stolen art objects have gained currency. The records of the Archaeological Survey of India show that the government has been able to retrieve 40 art objects between 2014 and 2020, and 75-80 art objects are in the pipeline to be returned. Yet while some return, others continue to remain in faraway lands, carrying within them an uneasy history of plunder and pillage.

Colonial loot abroad

“The major interpretative strategy by which India was to become known to Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries was through a construction of a history of India,” writes anthropologist Bernard S. Cohn in his celebrated work, ‘Colonialism and its forms of knowledge.’ He notes that it was the British in the 19th century, who in an authoritative way defined what is valuable among objects found in India. “It was the patrons who created a system of classification and determined what was valuable, that which would be preserved as monuments of the past, that which was collected and placed in museums, that which could be bought and sold, that which would be taken from India as mementos and souvenirs of their own relationship to India and Indians,” he writes.

Perhaps the most significant among objects that made its way to the British Museum through this process of exploration and classification of Indian history is a Buddhist shrine, the Amravati Stupa which was established in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh in the 3rd century BCE. It came into public attention in the late 18th century, when Colin Mackenzie excavated and recorded it. By 1845, Sir Walter Elliot removed parts of the sculpture and kept them in the Madras Museum, from where they were transferred to London in 1859, under the assumption that it would get spoiled in India. At present, it occupies a separate gallery in the British Museum, and unlike the Kohinoor, there is hardly any political rhetoric around its retrieval.

Mackenzie had been employed by the governor-general of India, Lord Wellesley, to conduct a survey of artefacts, oral histories and religion in South India. By the end of his career, objects collected by him included 6,218 coins, 106 images, 40 antiquities, 1,568 manuscripts, as well as copies of inscriptions and copper plates from temples. In the 1820s, after the death of Mackenzie, orientalist H H Wilson dispatched his entire collection to London. Some of these were put on display at the small museum which the Company had at its headquarters in Leadenhall Street.

The British Museum contains a large volume of Indian artefacts, a majority of which are from the collection of Major General Charles Stuart. Stuart lived in India between 1777 till his death in 1828. Nicknamed ‘Hindoo Stuart’, he was known for his fascination with Indian sculpture, primarily from Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, and central India. His collection was bought by John Bridge at an auction in London in 1829-30. The British Museum acquired the collection from his heirs in 1872.By the end of the 18th century, a number of EIC officials had returned back to England and were actively trying to maintain the repository of Indian cultural heritage they had acquired in India. A result of this was the collection of the India Office Records in the British Library. In 1801, it purchased its first huge collection of miniature paintings from retired company servant Richard Johnson. Similar collections of paintings of Hindu deities and other religious relics were also donated or sold by other company officials like John Flaming and Francis Buchanan Hamilton.

Some of the most famous among such objects which are still in England include a white nephrite jade wine cup belonging to Shah Jahan currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the seventh-century Sultanganj Buddha which is in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Then there were the war booties from India. The most famous among these of course is the Kohinoor which the British took under its possession after winning the second Anglo-Sikh war in 1849. Currently, it is on public display in the Tower of London and continues to attract political attention regarding its repatriation. But there are other such objects as well like Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s throne, decorated with rich gold sheets, also acquired during the Anglo-Sikh war. Currently, it is kept in the Victorian and Albert Museum in London. Then there is Tipu’s Tiger, an 18th-century mechanical toy that was carried away by the British when they stormed Tipu’s capital in 1799. It was later transferred to the Victorian and Albert Museum in London.

Post-independence theft of cultural heritage

Towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, there emerged an idea of retaining and conserving India’s past. “There emerged a growing consciousness to preserve the archaeological heritage of India. Curzon alongside John Marshall who was the director-general of the ASI were avid proponents of conservation,” explains Banerjee. Thereafter the effort to conserve the archaeological and cultural heritage of the country continued well into the period after Independence. In 1904, the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act was passed, which was followed by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958.

However, the exit of colonial powers ushered in a new phase of heritage theft. Archaeologist Vinay Kumar Gupta, in a research paper ‘Retrieval of Indian antiquities: Issues and challenges’, writes that the “lawful and organised looting of colonial powers changed into unlawful and disorganised looting” which was possible due to the “lack of strong anti-smuggling laws in former colonies.” He writes: “In India, the easiest target of smugglers have been the abandoned ancient temples, religious mathas, or platforms on the outskirts of villages and archaeological mounds which are illegally dug out from time to time.”

For instance, in 1976, a labourer digging up a field at Panthur village of Thanjavur district found a bronze idol of Lord Nataraja. He sold it off to a Canadian collector who in turn sent it to a curator at the British Museum. In 1991, however, the Nataraja was returned to Tamil Nadu.

Another remarkable case of heritage smuggling was that of the eight idols including the bronze Nataraja at the Brihadeshwara temple in a small village named Sripuranthan in Tamil Nadu. In 2006, they were stolen and smuggled out by the US-based art dealer Subhash Kapoor. In 2008 it was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. After the theft was exposed, the Australian government returned the Nataraja idol along with another idol of Shiva to India in March 2014.

There are many other pieces of antiquities, however, that continue to remain abroad. “From Khajuraho alone over 100 erotic sculptures had been stolen from the period between 1965 and1970,” write Banerjee and research scholar Ishani Ghorai in an article for the online portal Sahapedia titled, ‘Antiquities theft and ilicit antiquities trade in India.’ They note two other famous cases of theft, one being the sensational case of burglary in the Jaipur palace museum when 2,492 medieval period paintings went missing, and the other was the 1968 theft at the National Museum in New Delhi when 125 pieces of antique jewellery and 32 rare gold coins were stolen.

Speaking about the loopholes that allow such blatant plunder of cultural heritage even today, Banerjee says, “when I do my fieldwork what comes across to me is the lack of education about heritage.” She adds, “Say a person residing at a remote village in Bengal, he would probably not know why he needs to keep a 2nd century CE bronze sculpture. Also, there is very little monetary compensation for him, if at all. That is exactly what these networks of theft exploit.”

To return or not to return

In recent times though, there has been a conscious attempt by the ASI to detect smuggled objects and by museums abroad to return stolen artefacts. In September this year, the UK returned three ancient idols of Ram, Lakshman and Sita stolen from Tamil Nadu in 1978. In 2018, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced its decision to return an eighth-century stone sculpture of Goddess Durga and a limestone sculpture dating to the third century CE. More recently, the Australian government decided to return two 15th century door guardians from Tamil Nadu and a sculpture of a serpent king from either Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan.

At the same time, however, demands for the return of objects like the Kohinoor and the Amravati marbles have been turned down. In 2013, when British prime minister David Camaron was on a visit to India he was asked about the repatriation of the Kohinoor to which he replied that he did not support ‘returnism’ since it would empty out British museums.

Speaking about why it is more difficult for those objects which were shipped out during the colonial era to be returned, former director of antiquities in the ASI, DM Dimri says, “at that time India was part of the British empire. So an object removed from here and sent to London, was a mere shifting of location. Therefore they cannot be considered an illegal export.”

“When it comes to objects that were taken 100 or 200 years back by colonial powers, it is not clear whether we can call it stolen or not. Once it is clear that an object is stolen in the modern sense of the term, it becomes easier to return it,” says Vinod Daniel who is Chair, AusHeritage and board member of International Council of Museums (ICOM). “But a lot depends on the repatriation policy of the institution or country concerned. For instance, the Australian Museum has a clear policy that anything with social or religious significance that has been brought from another country will be returned if there is a request,” he adds.

In the last few years, growing public demand has emerged for the return of stolen objects. In 2014, two Singapore-based Indian art enthusiasts, S. Vijay Kumar and Anuraag Saxena, started the India Pride Project which uses social media to identify Indian cultural artefacts abroad and initiate their return. The group was active in ensuring that the Sripuranthan Nataraja was returned to India.

Explained: With Dutch museums set to return looted items, a look at India’s stolen treasures scattered worldwide

“History belongs to its geography,” says Saxena about the objective behind the project. “We are glad that through our initiative we have been able to bring this issue to public consciousness. Another impact I think we have had is to have a political consensus around this matter,” says Saxena.

Speaking about what more needs to be done to ensure that cultural heritage of the country is preserved, Saxena says, “there needs to be a national register or repository of all our heritage.” “Secondly, India needs to have a special task force that deals with this problem,” he adds. “Unless India claims what is rightfully ours, we cannot claim our place in the world.”

Further reading:

The anarchy: The relentless rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple

The return of international treasures by Jeanette Greenfield

Colonialism and its forms of knowledge by Bernard S. Cohn

Source: Indian Express, 3/12/20

How oppressive containment measures during Poona plague led to assassination of British officer

Indian Civil Service officer Charles Walter Rand felt the need for strong measures to "stamp out plague from Poona" and deployed the military to search infected persons. Soon, reports and rumours of harassment of locals - especially of Indian women - at the hands of British soldiers started emerging from the city.

THE FIRST recorded case of bubonic plague in Pune – then Poona – was discovered on October 2, 1896 when two passengers from Mumbai alighted at the railway station. By December that year, the city was showing signs of local transmission and the disease had started to spread rapidly – especially in the densely populated Peth areas. Earlier, after the reports of plague came in from Mumbai in September 1896, the municipal corporation had appointed a medical officer at Pune Railway Station to watch out for persons with Plague symptoms and send them to special sheds erected at Sassoon General Hospital.

The plague wave that had reached Pune was part of the ‘Third Plague Pandemic’ which had started in Yunnan, China in 1855 and entered India through the port city of Mumbai via Hong Kong. The epidemic would last for well over two decades and would kill about 10 million Indians between 1896 and 1918, as it ravaged one city after the other.

However, none among scores of cities that were afflicted by the pestilence would cause as much political uproar as Pune.

A DANGEROUS PLAGUE CENTRE’

By the end of February, 1897, Pune had recorded 308 cases of plague with 271 deaths. The dread of the disease which had such a high mortality rate had caused the locals to flee the city. The municipal officials estimated that about 15,000 to 20,000 locals had left the city to escape the pandemic and had settled in villages in the outskirts. As this was happening, locals, as well as Englishmen, were asking for the appointment of a ‘strong officer’ who would improve the sanitary and health situation in the city, failing which, they feared, “the matters will never mend and go down from bad to worse.”

The strongman that the Bombay Presidency Governor William Mansfield Sandhurst decided to appoint was 34-year-old Walter Charles Rand, an Oxford-educated officer of the Indian Civil Service, who was then serving in Satara. Rand was appointed on February 10, 1897 as an Assistant Collector and Chairman, Poona Plague Committee.

“My first duty was to ascertain the extent to which the disease had already spread in Poona,” Rand wrote in the plague report that he drafted in June-July, but died before its submission in August. “After examining the current death register of Poona Municipal Corporation and mortality returns for previous years I discovered that … the morality in the city was growing at an alarming rate since the beginning of January…On the same day I also informed the Collector that Poona had become a very dangerous plague centre,” Rand wrote.

WHY MILITARY HELP WAS TAKEN?

As per Rand, Surgeon Captain WWO Beveridge arrived in Pune to assist in fighting the epidemic in the city with the idea of using military men in the plague operations. “Up to the time of Surgeon Captain Beveridge’s arrival, the use of anything but civil agency for dealing with the epidemic had not been considered. The officer, who had had considerable experience of the Plague in Hong Kong and methods adopted there for stamping it out, formed an opinion that the help of soldiers would be desirable in Poona, especially to search for sufferers from plague, their removal to suitable hospitals, and the disinfection of plague-infected houses,” Rand says in the report.

Following this, Collector RA Lamb sent out a formal request to the government of Bombay Presidency. “The aid of the soldiers is needed because the men are available, they are disciplined, they can be relied upon to be thorough and honest in their inspection, while no native agency is available, or could be relied on if it were,” he said.

At this time the population of Pune – including those residing in municipal limits, cantonments and suburbs – was 1.61 lakh. The plan prepared by Rand attached the greatest importance to house-to-house search for infected patients and suspects. There was intense aversion among the townsfolk for taking out the plague-infected family members to the hospital. The families resorted to “incredible shifts” in order to prevent authorities from detecting a plague patient. Such patients were hidden in lofts, cupboards and gardens or “anywhere where their presence was least likely suspected”. This, the administration argued, would leave no option but to resort to “compulsory methods” to ensure isolation of the infected patients.
Five special plague hospitals were erected in various parts of the city, one each for Hindu, Muslim, Parsi communities in addition to a general hospital for all patients and the Sassoon Hospital where Europeans were treated. On the same line, four segregation camps were set up where family members and oth“There was, it is true, no Indian example of the suppression by strong measures, of an epidemic of plague which had established itself in a large town, but the possibility of so suppressing the disease had been demonstrated at Hongkong in 1894. It was certain that if the plague was not to be allowed to run its course, but was to be stamped out of Poona, stringent measures would have to be taken,” Rand observed in the report.

The containment policy adopted by Rand and his team was to actively search the localities in the city with the help of the soldiers accompanied by natives for plague-infected patients (or their dead bodies) and take them to the hospitals (or cremate the bodies under medical supervision). The houses where patients were found were cleaned, fumigated, dug up (to destroy rats) and lime washed.
The work of search parties was carried out between March 13 and May 19 1897. About 20 search parties (later increased to 60) each consisting three British soldiers and one native gentleman were formed for his purpose. A division of 10 search parties had one medical officer and a lady searcher to inspect women in purdah.

“In order that plague patients might not be removed before the arrival of the troops, no intimation as to what area that was to be searched was given to the public. The streets in which the search took place were patrolled by Cavalry. The only important complaint about the first day’s work was that doors forced open by the troops were not reclosed. This difficulty was overcome on subsequent occasions by attaching to each search division a few Native troops with hammers and staples to fasten up doors after the searchers,” reads the report.

As per Rand’s report, the attitude of the residents was “friendly” to the search parties except that of the Brahmin community which was unfriendly and tried to obstruct the searches. The medical officers were supplied with cash advances and had instructions to pay compensation for any articles belonging to plague patients that may have been destroyed in the process.

“It was found at the beginning of the operations that rather too many articles were at times destroyed as rubbish. Orders were accordingly issued on March 26 to Officers commanding limewashing divisions to visit, if possible, all houses to be limewashed and to decide what should be destroyed in each. It was also laid down that when a property of any value to the owners was destroyed by limewashing party, the Officer commanding the division should note the approximate cost of replacing what had been destroyed in order that compensation might afterwards be paid. In practice nothing was destroyed after the first fortnight of the operations except in the presence of an officer,” reads the report.

The searches, the Committee claimed, bore results. Between March 13 and May 19 1897, it searched 2,18,214 houses and found 338 plague cases and 64 corpses. The report says each house was searched 11 times during the course of the operation.

All entry and exit points to the city were manned by British soldiers to ensure that no one from the infected area enters Pune or plague suspects flee the city or smuggle out the dead bodies to escape testing by the authorities.

As per the British, there were very few complaints against the conduct of the soldiers – both British and Indian – and whenever any complaint was made action was taken against the violators. In a letter written to Rand on May 20 1897, Major A Deb V Paget, who was commanding the operations, lists six cases of violation of discipline by soldiers which were found to be true and involved stealing of cash, pocketing goods and receiving money from the locals.er contacts of the plague patients were kept under observation.

The committee also claimed that these “energetic measures” carried out by military officers with “praiseworthy zeal” led to the decline of the disease by the end of May 1897 after a peak in March.

HOW INDIANS SAW THESE OPERATIONS?

Local experience of these search operations and forceful segregation of plague patients and suspects, however, was not as benign. The complaints sent to senior officials – including Rand – and news reports in the local publications suggest that residents looked at these operations as a reign of terror.

As per the petitions, summarised by Rajnarayan Chandavarkar in his essay ‘Plague Panic and Epidemic Politics in India: 1896-1914’ published in the book Epidemics and Ideas, there was wanton and indiscriminate destruction of the property during searches. The segregation and lime washing parties would dig up the floor, put gallons of disinfectant in the nook and crannies of the houses. They at times broke open the doors and left them ajar, took away “perfectly healthy” persons and, in some cases, even neighbours and passers-by were packed to segregation camps.

“…There were complaints that ‘all the females are compelled to come out of their houses and stand before the public gaze in the open street and be there subjected to inspection by soldiers. Soldiers were said to behave ‘disgracefully with native ladies’ and the tenor of the official response was that they had ‘merely joked with a Marathi woman’ suggest that sexual harassment probably did occur. Shripat Gopal Kulkarni, an octogenarian, complained that ten or twelve soldiers had burst into his house, forced him to undress, ‘felt…the whole of my body and then made me sit and rise and sitting around me went on clapping their hands and dancing,” writes Chandavarkar.

It was at this backdrop that Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote in Mahratta, his English newspaper: “Plague is more merciful to us than its human prototypes now reigning the city. The tyranny of the Plague Committee and its chosen instruments is yet too brutal to allow respectable people to breathe at ease.”
No doubt that the regulations and measures as they were imposed in Pune were the most stringent among all the cities afflicted by the pandemic. In fact, Antony MacDonnel, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, had observed in a July 1897 communique that “If the plague regulations had been enforced in any city of these provinces in the way in which …they were…enforced in Poona, there would have been bloodshed here.”

THE MURDERS

Blood was indeed shed in Pune too. On June 22, 1897, Chapekar brothers – Damodar (27), Balkrisha (24) and Vasudev (17 or 18) – shot Rand and Lieutenant Charles Ayerst (mistaking him for Rand before he was located in the preceding carriage) while they were returning from Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Celebration at Government House in Ganeshkhind (now Pune University). While Ayerst died immedDamodar Chapekar, who is said to have planned and led the assassination, made it clear in his confession (which was later retracted by him) that the search operations carried out by British soldiers were behind his decision to kill Rand.

“In the search of houses a great zulum (atrocity) was practised by the soldiers and they entered the temples and brought out women from their houses, broke idols and burnt pothis (holy books). We determined to revenge these actions but it was no use to kill common people and it was necessary to kill the chief man. Therefore we determined to kill Mr Rand who was the chief,” Damodar was recorded to have said on October 8, 1897 in front of a magistrate following his arrest.

While Chapekar brothers or their accomplices did not mention of it, the British also surmised that the attack may have been inspired by the “peculiarly violent writing of the Poona newspapers regarding the plague administration” that shortly preceded the murders, almost openly advocating the duty of forcible resistance to the authority. The reference here was to Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s editorials in Kesari as well as writings and reporting in other newspapers such as Sudharak and Poona Vaibhav among others.

The government – startled, embarrassed by the murders – booked Tilak of sedition under Section 124 of Indian Penal code for exciting feelings of disaffection among the public through his writings in Kesari. It was also alleged that by glorifying and justifying Shivaji’s killing of Afzal Khan in the 17th century, he directly supported violence and resultantly caused murders of the two British officers barely a week after the publication of the articles. A few months later, the court found Tilak guilty and sent him to 18 months of imprisonment.

ACCUSATION OF SEXUAL VIOLATIONS

The alleged atrocities committed by British soldiers during plague control operations also caused an uproar in United Kingdom when Congress leader from Maharashtra Gopal Krishna Gokhale who was visiting England to appear before Welby Commission gave an interview to The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) on July 2, 1897 (published on July 3) in which he levelled serious accusations against the British soldiers. These “rumours” were the talk of the town in India but were raised outside the country with such prominence for the first time.

Apart from detailing how soldiers “ignorant of the language and contemptuous to customs” offended  in scores of ways, he also made allegations of “violation of two women, one of whom is said to have committed suicide rather than to survive her shame” attributing the information to his contacts back home in Pune. This caused an uproar in the British parliament as well back home in India. The Bombay Presidency government called it a “malevolent invention” and challenged Gokhale to prove them or share with the government the names of the persons who had shared this information with him.

After his return to India, Gokhale tried his best to gather evidence from the persons who had written to him about the atrocities against the women – especially the two cases of rape – but nobody was willing to come forward, especially in the light of the severe crackdown in Pune post Rand’s assassination including sedition case against Tilak. A detailed account of this episode has been given by Stanley Wolpert in his book Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and reform in the making of modern India.

Unable to substantiate these claims, Gokhale published an “unqualified apology” to British soldiers which was published by The Manchester Guardian and The Times of India on August 4.iately, Rand succumbed to the injuries on July 3.

As per, Chandavarkar the rumours of these violations – which may or may not be confirmed – should be seen as an indication of the nightmarish experience of the local population of their private places being “invaded and violated” by uninformed foreign agents.

“Stories about the behaviour of the soldiers may have borne a considerable measure of truth but they also reflected the nightmarish invasion and violation of privacy – even god-rooms and kitchens – by the most frightening, powerful, uniformed foreign agent of public authority. Sexual harassment by the soldiers and their ‘disgraceful behaviour towards the native ladies’ almost certainly occurred – and, indeed, physical examination, ‘the exploration of the native’s body’ in the street or at railway checkpoints may themselves be regarded precisely as that – but reports of them also served as a metaphor for the violent eruption of the state into the privacy of people’s lives,” Chandavarkar writes.

After the initial frenzy had abated, and following Rand’s murder, the Plague Committee slackened its operations although plague continued to flourish. The killing spree in the city went on for several years. By May 1904, it infected 45,665 and killed 37,178.

Source: Indian Express, 9/06/2020

Malik Ambar: The African slave who built Aurangabad and ruined the game for Mughals in the Deccan

The story of Malik Ambar, an African slave turned warrior, is an unusual one. Sold and bought several times by slave dealers during his youth, fate brought him miles away from his home in Ethiopia to India.

Malik Ambar was known by the name of ‘Chapu’ until he fell into the hands of slave dealers. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Among several allegorical paintings created by Abu’l Hasan, a chief painter at Emperor Jahangir’s court, is one depicting the Mughal sovereign shooting arrows at the severed head of an Abyssinian slave. Created somewhere in 1620, the painting is a perfect depiction of Jahangir’s furore towards a man considered his arch-nemesis, the one he lambasts as “the ill-starred” and “the black fated” and who, throughout his life, remained a thorn in the flesh for the Empire in the Deccan.

The story of Malik Ambar, an African slave turned warrior, is an unusual one. Sold and bought several times by slave dealers during his youth, fate brought him miles away from his home in Ethiopia to India. In India, not only did Ambar get his freedom back, but he also rose up the social ladder, got an army, vast estates, and founded a city that today goes by the name ‘Aurangabad’.

Sold and resold many times

Born in 1548 in southern Ethiopia’s Khambata region, Ambar is believed to have been associated with the Oromo tribe, an ethnic group that now represents over 35 per cent of the country’s population. He was known by the name of ‘Chapu’ until he fell into the hands of slave dealers. Historians believe either he was captured during a war or was sold into the trade by his poor parents due to poverty.

Soon, the young Abyssinian was paraded with other slaves in markets across the Middle East where he was bought by an Arab. Thereafter, he was bought and resold on several occasions.

Citing a contemporary European source and Persian Chronicles, Historian Richard M Eaton, in his book A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761 Eight Indian Lives, writes that Chapu was sold in the Red Sea port of Mocha (in Yemen) for the sum of eighty Dutch guilders. From there, he was taken to Baghdad and “sold to a prominent merchant who, recognising Chapu’s superior intellectual qualities, raised and educated the youth, converted him to Islam, and gave him the name ‘Ambar’.”

In the early 1570s, Ambar was taken to the Deccan as southern India was then called. Here he was purchased by a certain Chengiz Khan. Khan himself was a former slave who had risen to hold the office of Peshwa, or chief minister of the Nizam Shahi sultanate of Ahmadnagar in India.

The rise of the African slave

Ambar was amongst one of a thousand other ‘Habshi’ (a term used to refer to members of various ethnic communities from the Abyssinian highlands) purchased by Khan, when fate brought him to the Deccan.

Eaton notes that the Deccan sultanates were systematically recruiting the Habshis as slaves in the 16th century. They were highly valued for their physical strength and loyalty, and were frequently put to mThe 14th-century Medieval Moroccan scholar and traveller Ibn Battuta in his writings mention that the Habshis were “guarantors of safety” for ships travelling in the Indian Ocean. He notes that the slaves had such a reputation that even if one was on board, the ship would be avoided by pirates.

However, in Deccan society, the slaves did not have a permanent status. Upon the death of their masters, they were usually “set free” and served as per their free will in service of powerful commanders in the Empire. Some even reached such highs that they were soon seen as political game-changers, as it happened in the case of Ambar.ilitary service.

Five years after taking him on, Ambar’s master and patron Chenghiz Khan died, and Ambar was set free. For the next 20 years, he served as a mercenary for the Sultan of neighbouring Bijapur. It is here he was given charge of a small troop and bestowed with the title “Malik”.

‘Ambar’s land’

In 1595, Malik Ambar returned to the Ahmadnagar Sultanate and served under another Habshi lord. This was the time when Mughal Emperor Akbar laid eyes on the Deccan and began a significant military expedition towards Ahmednagar. This was also Akbar’s last expedition before he passed away.

“It was really during the Mughal invasion of Ahmednagar in the late 1590s that Malik Ambar truly came into his own,” historian Manu S Pillai writes in his book Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji.

“At the time of the first siege, he had less than 150 cavalrymen in his command, and he joined himself to a more established Habshi lord. But as war shred to pieces the nobility, and challenged the loyalties of large numbers of men, within a year Ambar held in his control 3,000 warriors; by 1600, this number rose to almost 7,000, now including Marathas and other Dakhnis – a ‘multiracial, multi-ethnic force that broadly shared a regional identity distinct from the northern Mughals’,” writes Pillai.

In the coming years, Ambar married one of his daughters to a 20-year-old scion of Ahmadnagar’s royal family in neighbouring Bijapur, projecting him as a future ruler of the Nizam Shahi state against the Mughals.

“Cleverly, using muscle when it was needed and trickery when that suited his ends, Ambar emerged as the principal force in what used to be the Ahmednagar state. At the height of his power, it was said that the Nizam Shahi of the western Deccan was simply referred to as ‘Ambar’s land’,” Pillai writes.

Along with the Marathas, Ambar’s feud with the Mughals – now led by Emperor Jahangir – lasted for decades. He was widely known for unleashing guerrilla warfare on the Mughal army.

Eaton’s book mentions that ‘general after general’ were dispatched from Delhi towards the south to beat the Ethiopian, but failed. “The more times he defeated superior Mughal armies, the more men rallied to his side; in 1610, he even managed to expel the Mughals from Ahmednagar fort,” Eaton notes.

Builder of Aurangabad

Apart from being an able fighter, Ambar was also a fine administrator. In 1610, after briefly expelling the Mughals from Ahmednagar, Ambar established a new capital, a city named Khirki (present-day Aurangabad in Maharashtra) for the sultanate.

The city eventually became home to over 2,00,000 people including the Marathas after whom several suburbs such as Malpura, Khelpura, Paraspura, and Vithapura came to be named.

“It was around 1610-11 that Ambar made Khirki his base, and this slowly emerged as a major urban centre, where like Ambar, much of his Maratha nobility and military leadership also built houses and developed localities,” Pillai says in an email interview with Indianexpress.com. “Waterworks and an underground canal were among the early developments he brought about, which is how a lot of cities in the dry Deccan area were able to expand. We see it with Bijapur as well, a few decades before, and this required considerable expertise in engineering and planning.”

In the coming wars, the city along with the Ahmadnagar Sultanate fell to the Mughals. It was under the reign of the 17th-century Mughal monarch, Aurangzeb, that the city came to be renamed as ‘Aurangabad’. “They too added to the city’s infrastructure and allowed the city to grow. This included improving and expanding the waterworks. But in the middle, there were also one or two devastating attacks on the city that ruined much of its beauty, even though it managed to recover and rebuildPillai says Ambar in building a new city in the first place seemed to mark his legacy. “This was, after all, a time of great builders and it would not be surprising that the Habshi warlord also wished to follow in that tradition. He is also supposed to have built both the Jama Masjid and Kali Masjid in Aurangabad, as the city was later named by the Mughals.”

The Abyssinian is also credited with establishing a more efficient land revenue model of the time which was used by the Marathas under Shivaji, whose grandfather (Maloji) was a close aide of Ambar. In years to come, Shivaji in his grand epic poem ‘Sivabharata’ also mentioned Ambar, referring him “as brave as the sun”. itself with time,” says Pillai.

Ambar died in 1626 and was laid to rest in a mausoleum, designed by him in Khuldabad.

Surprisingly, upon his death, Emperor Jahangir’s surrogate diarist, Mutamid Khan made an entry noting: “He had no equal in warfare, in command, in sound judgment, and in administration. History records no other instance of an Abyssinian slave arriving at such eminence.”

Further reading– ‘A History of the Deccan.’ In Sultans of Deccan India: Opulence and Fantasy, 1500–1700,’ by Richard M Eaton; ‘Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji,’ by Manu S Pillai; A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761 Eight Indian Lives by Richard M Eaton

Source: Indian Express, 15/05/2020

What Puranic historians won’t accept

The oldest horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariot in the world is younger than the Harappan civilisation.

A study has shown that there is no evidence of Steppe genes in Harappa according to analysis of DNA found in Rakhigarhi. This has led to the claim that Harappan civilisation was indigenous, 100% Indian, not shaped by any foreign influence whatsoever.

Since many Puranic historians are convinced Rakhigarhi was Vedic, it could follow that the Vedas had no foreign influence either. Puranic historians have dated the Vedas, based on internal astronomical evidence, to 7,000 BCE (9,000 years ago), the events of the Ramayana to 5,000 BCE (7,000 years ago) and the Mahabharata war at Kurukshetra to 3,000 BCE (5,000 years ago). They are convinced the Vedas shaped the Sindhu-Saraswati civilisation which, according to archaeologists, waxed from 2,500 BCE (4,500 years ago) and waned by 1,900 BCE (3,900 years ago).

Horse, chariot and a civilisation

But there is only one problem. According to archaeologists, the horse was only domesticated 5,000 years ago, in Eurasia. The spoked-wheel chariot was invented in the same region 4,000 years ago. It was used by Hyksos to conquer Egypt 3,600 years ago, long after the Harappan civilisation had waned. The earliest visual evidence of archers on chariots riding into battle involves the Hittites and the Egyptians who fought in Khadesh, in what is now Syria, about 3,300 years ago. In other words, the oldest horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariot in the world is younger than the Harappan civilisation.

How then can the Vedas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata which, according to Puranic historians, predate the Harappan civilisation already have knowledge of horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariots? The Vedas adore horses and speak of Indra riding spoked-wheel chariots. Rama rode one out of Ayodhya and Krishna served as charioteer in another. How is that possible? Is there a global conspiracy to deny that horses and spoked-wheel chariots were part of Indian civilisation over 9,000 years ago? Puranic historians insist Indians are victims of a complex Western 200-year-old conspiracy involving hundreds of scientists, historians, linguists and archaeologists. Anyone who argues otherwise becomes anti-national. Thus, a gag order is passed.

ALSO READ

New reports clearly confirm ‘Arya’ migration into India

As the Puranas inform us, there were several kings even before Rama. His ancestor, Ikshavaku, was the son of Manu, who established a civilisation after the Great Flood, probably referring to the Last Ice Age, which occurred 12,000 years ago. This aligns well with information found in the Manusmriti that the four ages of man lasted 4,800, 3,600, 2,400 and 1,200 years, making the total age 12,000 years, which is half the time taken by the sun to travel across the 12 houses of the zodiac (27 nakshatras), known as The Great Year. Of course, none of this has any archaeological evidence. But it is in the memory of a people, a popular truth, favoured by politicians who can destroy the careers of journalists, historians and scientists who argue otherwise.

Agriculture in India is dated only to 7,000 BCE (the age of Rama, according to Puranic historians) and oldest pottery in the Gangetic plains is dated to 1,000 BCE. But Puranic historians are convinced that there is more evidence out there — the archeologists have not yet found it, or maybe don’t want to find it, or, worse, are hiding it. In America, there are ‘White Hippie Brahmins’ who have made a lucrative career of selling the idea to nostalgic Indians, who have given up Indian citizenship, that all of human civilisation has its roots in India. Cultural wisdom spread via the Vedas, from India, since the last Ice Age.

Puranic and Jain history

But while Puranic history may be true, it conflicts with Jain history. The Jains say that Nemi-natha was a contemporary of Krishna, but he lived 84,000 years ago at least. He was the 22nd Tirthankara, while Munisuvrat-natha (contemporary of Ram) was the 20th Tirthankara who probably lived in 1,184,980 BCE. The first Tirthankara was Rishabha-nath. He lived over 84,00,000 years ago, as per conservative estimates. Rishabha and Nemi names are found in the Yajur Veda, revealing that the Vedas have memory of these ancient sages. Rishabha’s symbol, the bull, has been identified in Harappan seals (dated to 2,500 BCE by archaeologists). His son was Bharat, after whom India is called Bharat-varsha. His daughters introduced the Brahmi script (dated by historians to only 300 BCE) and decimal system (dated by historians to 200 CE). It is not clear if Manu came before Rishabha, or after. Neither Puranic nor Jain historians seem to agree. Some argue that Rishabha was Shiva, or that Shiva was Rishabha. But Hindu Puranas speak of Shiva’s marriage and entry into worldly life, while Jain Puranas speak of Rishabha’s renunciation of marriage and worldly life.

Questions about the Vedas

That the Harappan civilisation was totally indigenous is indisputable according to current genetic studies. But the Vedas? Could they have been composed after arrival of Steppe Pastoralists around 1,500 BCE (3,500 years ago) which aligns with global historical timelines? Puranic historians dismiss the horse-drawn spoked-wheel chariot argument, the linguistic papers, the archaeological readings and genetic research by insisting that Western scholars are interpreting data to suit pre-existing hypothesis. After all, the Rig Veda does not have any memory of a homeland beyond the Himalayas.

But the Vedas do not refer to any south Indian geography. Does that make the Vedas a pan-Indian scripture, or a north Indian scripture? Early Dharma-sutras refer only to the Gangetic plains as Arya-varta. Agastya, a Vedic rishi, migrated to the south as per Puranic as well as Tamil tales. Kaveri is called Dakshina Ganga, or Ganga of the south. Does that mean only north India, and not all of India, is the homeland of Vedas? Who decides? Historians or Puranic historians? Politicians or scientists?

Devdutt Pattanaik writes and lectures on mythology in modern times

Source: The Hindu, 18/09/2019

As we build smart cities, let’s look at our ancestors, the Harappans

There are several reasons why the town planners and designers are unable to capitalise on our own knowledge of these advanced traditional systems.

The region of Gurugram and the state of Haryana at large present an interesting phenomenon of historical, archaeological and mythological facts that are yet to be completely deciphered and interpreted. One needs to realise that in today’s quest of making Gurugram and others smart cities in Haryana, we may need to pick up some lessons from the smartly designed Harappan (now termed as the Sindhu Saraswati) cities of this region.

Renowned archaeologist professor Vasant Shinde mentions “Excavations over three consecutive years (between 1997 and 2000) carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) had uncovered evidence of a well-established road, drainage system, large rainwater storage facility, and additional city infrastructure in Rakhigarhi site.” While professor Shinde’s own excavations focus more on the skeletons excavated in the necropolis of Rakhigarhi and their DNA testing, his recent book and Pupul Jayakar Memorial Lecture at INTACH reiterate the ancient Indian knowledge system in terms of town planning principles, which are relevant for cities even today. These include basic infrastructure, accessibility to water supply and efficient drainage systems, among others.

There are several reasons why the town planners and designers are unable to capitalise on our own knowledge of these advanced traditional systems. To begin with, the hiatus created by our current colonial mindset leads us to believe that there is a total disconnect with our past and these principles cannot be applicable to the needs of the advanced societies today. Adding to this, there is a complete gap in a holistic approach towards understanding and interpreting these age-old town planning systems. The current bodies of knowledge exist in silos of various disciplines like archaeology, geology, anthropology and mythology, researching within their limited disciplinary frameworks with no attempt at convergence and absolutely no aim at linking with the current planning of cities and towns. Even though some of the later rural settlements in these archaeological areas actually existed on the footprints of the ancient Sindhu Saraswathi settlements and even though the rural- urban inhabitants of today reflect continuity in rituals from ancient times such as placing the bindi on the forehead, wearing of bangles, culinary practices, such as the use of herbs, and observance of Vedic fire rituals in most ceremonies, it is difficult for us to ascertain their connect and relevance for our future existence.

INTACH’s Haryana chapter is in the process of understanding and documenting the convergence of all the above strands of research to determine the extent, boundary and component of this ancient cultural landscape along with its alignment with the existing landscape with the aim of using this interpretation for a way forward in capitalising this knowledge for today’s planning as well as showcasing it as Haryana’s heritage for local, national and international audience.

Sudhir Bhargava, the Rewari chapter convener has mapped ‘Brahmavarta’ through detailed studies and mentions in the Vedas. Parallelly, archaeologists have traced the maximum number of archaeological sites in the state of Haryana that coincide with the Ghaggar basin, the most recent one being Rakhigarhi by Prof. Vasant Shinde, along with other sites such as Bhirrana, Farmana, Girawar earlier excavated by the ASI. More recently, excavations are being carried out in Kunal by the Haryana State Directorate of Archaeology and the National Museum. The Sanauli ‘rath’ excavations in the region by SK Manjul, ASI, in 2018 open up possibilities for dating Mahabharata period somewhere between 1100 BCE and 2000 BCE.

INTACH is also working on the awareness of the Sindhu Sarawati heritage by collaborating with various institutions, such as the internship programme of Ashoka University. Listing of works is also being undertaken by the Sushant School of Art and Architecture. A picture book titled ‘Legend of Rakhigarhi’ designed and conceptualised by the interns of Ashoka University was released in 2017 and a heritage trail for Rakhigarhi was conducted by INTACH’s Hisar chapter on February 17, 2019, with the active involvement of local villagers and Ashoka University interns. The children book on Rakhigarhi centres around ‘Rakhi’ a girl child who is the resident of Gurugram and visits her grandfather at Rakhigarhi. It concludes on how she wants her friends in Gurugram to visit the place with her next time, so that she can tell them stories about the interesting history of the region.

Working together with all stakeholders and Government organisations may help to create a deeper understanding of our past and possibly lead to some long-term, sensitive proposals for the future cities that are planned on these past foundations.

(Shikha Jain is state convenor, INTACH, Haryana Chapter and member of Heritage Committees under ministries of culture and HRD. She is co-­editor of the book ‘Haryana: Cultural Heritage Guide’; director, DRONAH Development and Research Organisation.)

Source: Hindustan Times, 4/03/2019