Give reasons why history can be periodised
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We periodise history in an attempt to capture the characteristics of a time, its central features as they appear to us. Periodisation demarcates the difference between periods. They reflect our ideas about the past. They show how we see the significance of the change from one period to the next.
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university syllabi will tell us that Indian history is divided into three phases, Ancient, Medieval and the Modern. There will indeed be some uncertainty over where the ancient period ends and the medieval begins, but the three phase periodisation is retained with a difference of a few centuries by one and all.
As readers can sense, what begins with an unequivocal statement ends with a degree of ambiguity ‘with broadest margins’. The idea of India itself is a product of long and incomplete history of integration of local and regional societies into larger political and cultural formations. Historians like Romila Thapar have occasionally dissected this to find a group of nuclear regions separated from each other by long distances of forest and pastoral tracts.3 These nuclear regions (the Ganga Valley, Malwa, Raichur Doab, Andhra coastal plains, Saurashtra, Tamil coastal plains, Assam Valley, Orissa Plains etc) were characterised by peasant agriculture, settlement hierarchy, specialisation, a high degree of social stratification and above all state formation. Over time these nuclear regions were integrated politically and culturally. Hence despite often emerging as autonomous socio-political units, they had similar political and social structures as well as religious and cultural norms. These in turn sought to integrate the societies around them into one social unit. Often what passes for Indian history is essentially the history of these nuclear regions, especially the Ganges Valley. The intervening vast spaces were inhabited by hunter-gatherer societies, tribal societies living on a mix of hunting gathering, non-intensive cropping and animal husbandry and also tribes or bands practicing specialised crafts. The overwhelming presence of such societies had deep impact not only on spatialisation of the subcontinent but also on the course of its history even if read as the history of the nuclear regions. They simply cannot be treated as peripheral to Indian History as many historians have sought to do. Nor can they be taken as historyless people – societies without change. They too went through processes of change and transformations but so far historians have not developed methods to study them.
As readers can sense, what begins with an unequivocal statement ends with a degree of ambiguity ‘with broadest margins’. The idea of India itself is a product of long and incomplete history of integration of local and regional societies into larger political and cultural formations. Historians like Romila Thapar have occasionally dissected this to find a group of nuclear regions separated from each other by long distances of forest and pastoral tracts.3 These nuclear regions (the Ganga Valley, Malwa, Raichur Doab, Andhra coastal plains, Saurashtra, Tamil coastal plains, Assam Valley, Orissa Plains etc) were characterised by peasant agriculture, settlement hierarchy, specialisation, a high degree of social stratification and above all state formation. Over time these nuclear regions were integrated politically and culturally. Hence despite often emerging as autonomous socio-political units, they had similar political and social structures as well as religious and cultural norms. These in turn sought to integrate the societies around them into one social unit. Often what passes for Indian history is essentially the history of these nuclear regions, especially the Ganges Valley. The intervening vast spaces were inhabited by hunter-gatherer societies, tribal societies living on a mix of hunting gathering, non-intensive cropping and animal husbandry and also tribes or bands practicing specialised crafts. The overwhelming presence of such societies had deep impact not only on spatialisation of the subcontinent but also on the course of its history even if read as the history of the nuclear regions. They simply cannot be treated as peripheral to Indian History as many historians have sought to do. Nor can they be taken as historyless people – societies without change. They too went through processes of change and transformations but so far historians have not developed methods to study them.
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