Our Past Traditions

We have become a nation that keeps on denying its own legacies, preferring to keep moving further and further away from its roots. Our old literature is either completely ignored out of the misplaced notion that it is retrograde and serves no purpose of addressing modern needs, or else is scrutinised in minute detail to locate evidence that can fit pet theories of class struggle and ethnocentric conflict. Thereafter, in complete ignorance of our own social and political traditions we proceed to beg and borrow systems and frameworks birthed and nurtured in foreign lands for societies and needs as completely removed from ours as chalk is from cheese.

Let us not look too far in the depths of time. Let us instead begin with Bharatchandra Raigunakar's Vidyasundar, written sometime in the middle of the 18th century. Here is a small excerpt which describes the fortifications that the protagonist of the ballad, Sundar, sees in the prosperous capital of Bardhaman. Two things leap out even to my untrained eye. First, the army of the king was a secular force comprised of multiple ethnic and religious groups, which proves that skill, rather than any measure of bigotry, was the prime decider of this important government machinery, even during the deprivations of the 18th century. Second, the city had multiple defensive perimeters laid out in a very structured and planned manner. My own conclusions from these few lines are that these defensive layers consisted of (feel free to disagree here) :

1. An outermost ring of artillery batteries manned by Europeans
2. A second layer of offensive troops, most likely Muslim cavalry - I draw the conclusion of cavalry from the words Arbi and Turki, often associated with horses
3. A third layer of defensive formations drawn from the Kshatriya castes, with my conclusion about defense coming from the phrase samar-e atal - unmoved in battle.
4. A fourth layer of Rajput warriors that formed the king's personal guard
5. A fifth layer of elephants (most likely used for heavy payload work and transport) and messengers
6. And a last layer of Bundela Rajputs that protected the treasury and provisions.

I have no idea whether this formation makes any military sense, and perhaps someone with the proper training can comment on it. But in case it does, it means that there may be many such gems within our own reach and buy instead the drivel handed out by second and third hand sources.

Time we started discovering our past on our own.