Explain the features of 'Nationalist Historiography' of Ancient India.
Answers
Hey friend
here is your answer
Many Indians, affected by nationalism, and some Europeans, took up an examination of colonial stereotypes virtually as a challenge from the second half of the 19th century.
Indian historians tried to prove the falsity of colonial historical narrative on the basis of analysis of existing historical sources, as also the hunt for fresh sources. Of course, they also were moved by a feeling of-hurt national pride.
For decades, their work was confined to ancient and medieval periods. The professional historians did not take up the modern period though, as we shall see, the economists did, basically because of two reasons: (a) most of them were working in government or government-controlled schools and colleges, there was fear that any critique of colonialism would affect their careers; (b) they accepted the contemporary British historical view that scientific history must not deal with recent or contemporary period.
The Indian historians proclaimed the colonial notion of India's tradition of spirituality as a mark of distinction and of India's greatness and superiority over the West, especially in terms of 'moral values' as compared to the essentially 'materialistic' character of Western .
Many historians discovered in India's past diplomatic and political institutions analogous to those of contemporary. They hailed the discovery in the beginning of the 20th century of Arthashastra by Kautilya and said that it proved that
Indians were equally interested and proficient in administration, diplomacy and economic management by the state. Many glorified Kautilya and compared him with Machiavelli and Bismarck. Many also denied the dominant influence of religion on the state and asserted the latter's secular character.
The Kings in ancient India dispensed justice to all. Some even asserted the strong presence of the popular element in the state and went even so far as to say that in many cases the political structure approached that of modem democracies.
There were many limits on autocracy or the power of the rulers. There were many channels through which public opinion became effective. Some even argued that Indian monarchies were limited and often approached constitutional monarchy For example; the Mantri Parishad described by Kautilya was compared with the Privy Council of Britain. Above all, very often the existence of local self-governments was asserted and the example of democratically elected village panchayats was cited.
A few writers went so far as to talk of the existence of assemblies and parliaments and of the cabinet system, as under Chandra Gupta, Akbar and Shivaji.
They denied the charge that Indian rulers took recourse to arbitrary taxation and argued that a taxation system virtually analogous to that of a modern system of taxation prevailed. K.P. Jayaswal, a celebrated historian of the first quarter of the 20th century, took this entire approach to the extreme. In his Hindu Polity, published in 1915, he argued that the ancient Indian political system was either republican or that of constitutional monarchy. He concluded: 'The constitutional progress made by the Hindus has probably not been equaled, much less surpassed, by any polity of antiquity.' (This was to counter the European view that Greece was the home of democracy).
Basically, the nationalist approach was to assert that anything that was politically positive in the West had already existed in India. Thus R. C. Maunder wrote in his Corporate Life in Ancient India that institutions 'which we are accustomed to look upon as of western growth had also flourished in India long ago.
Colonial historians stressed that Indians were always divided by religion, region, language, and caste, that it was colonialism alone which unified them, and that their unity would disappear if colonial rule disappeared.
Kautilya, for example, they said, had advocated in the Arthashastra the need for a national king. This need to assert the unity of India in the past explains, in part, why Indian historians tended to see Indian history as a history of Indian empires and their break up and why they treated the period of empires as period of national greatness.