The People Who Changed the World

By R.K. Srivastava

This book portrays the world history in an entirely new landscape which highlights the pace of development of all the major civilizations of the world since the dawn of human history. Mans rational behavior compelled him to search and innovate new things in order to emerge victorious in his struggle for existence, and in the process, he elevated human civilization. But different civilizations developed on different lines. Some were fast initially but later turned static, and some were static initially but later gained momentum to become world leaders, while some were in between. The author has broadly categorizes all the world civilizations into seven segments and demonstrated their behavior of development graphically. Indian civilization has been evaluated as initially glorious and highly developed, but later it turned static due to several inherent factors. Anglo-Saxon civilization has been adjudged as initially primitive and after AD 1000 it began to move slowly and later gained pace to become world leader. It has been suggested in the book that Indians should learn from the Anglo-Saxons and should follow their road to development, which has been heavily propitiated with scientific and technological innovations and rational thinking since AD 1000.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Jul 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781482800241

R.K. Srivastava

The author is an ex-banker of a nationalized bank named Allahabad Bank, served as senior manager. He has been a keen student of history since his boyhood and took active interest in student movements during the turbulent period from 1971 to 1977. He also participated in trade union movements during his service days. He was attracted toward Marxism in his youth days and read a lot of Marxian as well as Marxist literature. He saw the collapse of the Soviet Union along with its East European Allies and drifting of Chinese polity toward market mechanism. This induced him to contemplate further about the veracity of Marxian theory and its implementation by the socialist world. This book is the outcome of his revised thinking.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One

Glorious Past Of India: Main Features

Chapter Two

Stagnation And Decline4

Chapter Three

Britain As Pioneer Of Change

Chapter Four

Role Of British Monarchy

Chapter Five

An Anatomy Of Major Wars Fought On Indian Soil

Chapter Six

Major Wars In Post-Independent India

Chapter Seven

Impact Of British Rule Over India

Chapter Eight

Trends Of History7

Chapter Nine

Epilogue2

News Paper Reports

Bibliography

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank Dr. S.C. Bajpayee, Registrar, Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotony, Lucknow and Dr. R.R. Buxi, Associate Professor, Department of History, Govt. Degree college, Basti, who helped me in providing valuable material and reference books which have been incorporated in this book. I am also grateful for their valuable suggestions regarding the book.

R.K. SRIVASTAVA ‘SASHAKT’

I dedicate this book to the memory of my late humble mother and contemplative poet father whose inspirations and blessings ignited my spirits, gave me strength and guided me in my life-path which has been full of struggle.

R.K. SRIVASTAVA ‘SASHAKT’

INTRODUCTION

History is not a magic show, but there is plenty of magic in it for those who have eyes to see.¹

This book is a humble attempt to watch this show from an entirely different angle which has been hitherto remained absent in various studies of human history. This angle is an analytical angle which sees history not as a jumble of events, wars, discoveries, inventions, rise and fall of great dynasties and empires etc, but seeks to find a definite dynamism and a direction into it with a regular and uninterrupted flow of human behavior towards its urgent desire to achieving a just, peaceful, prosperous and progressive social order. In my view, human history has got a language of its own and has been articulating during the ages, but we are not listening to it, or simply ignoring it.

LORD KRISHNA said in ‘Geeta’;

Whatever happened in the past was for the good. Whatever is happening now is also for the good, and whatever shall happen in the future would be for the good too.

This above saying of LORD KRISHNA has a deep meaning. What he wants to say is that the events occur in human history are independent of man’s wishes or thoughts and moves in a certain direction with an intent to achieving an ideal goal or destination. KRISHNA was a great philosopher who anticipated the movement of human history as back as 5000 years ago. He further said;

Hence do not repent over the past. Do not worry for the future. Just think of the present that is in progress.

His emphasis on the ‘Present’ indicates that improvements of the ‘Present’ is in the hands of man only; but this improvement can properly be achieved when he does not repeat the mistakes of the ‘Past’.

Nehru wrote; for the past is past and done with, we cannot change it; the future is yet to come, and perhaps we may be able to shape it a little. If the past has given us some part of the truth, the future also hides many aspects of the truth, and invites us to search for them. But often the past is jealous of the future and holds us in a terrible grip, and we have to struggle with it to get free to face and advance towards the future.

He further said;

History, it is said, has many lessons to teach us; and there is another saying that history never repeats itself. Both are true, for we cannot learn anything form it by slavishly trying to copy it, or by expecting it to repeat itself or remain stagnant; but we can learn something from it by prying behind it and trying to discover the forces that move it. Even so, what we get is seldom a straight answer. ²

To my view, Karl Marx was the first philosopher who had attempted to study the History of mankind in a scientific and analytical way and tried to find out its laws of motion. According to Marx, The history of all human society, past and present, has been the history of class struggles, thus Marx visualized and identified the class struggle as a motive force of history which had a dynamic conception. He further said;

At a certain stage of social development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing-with the property relations which have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. ³

I am not a historian, but only a keen student of history who is perturbed and bemused, while going through history, to find the mankind facing the wars and conflicts with immense misery, destruction and sufferings, despite the tall claims of socio-economic developments and all-round achievements in science and technology, even in today’s world. Societies formed on the Marx’s thesis of class-struggle could not bestow on the people of Russia and its East European allies a peaceful and prosperous life with liberal ethos and ultimately, after about seventy years, they have to shun it. China and some other countries who had also adopted the Marxist theory for social change and progress as state policy, now very shrewdly converting and transgressing it according to the times of the modern concept of ‘market economy’.

Though the class-struggle has been a very important and powerful motive force behind the movements of human history since the very inception, some other equally important and less-revealed factors have also been there in varying degrees in deciding the course of history. Class-struggles or class-wars have been manifestations of antagonistic factions whose contradictory self-interests could not be resolved otherwise. This self interest has been a changing phenomenon in different eras, new contradictions emerge with time and new fortifications take place among various human factions and struggle continues. In this way the flow of human history goes on endlessly.

As Nehru said;

The river of life is never still; it flows on, and sometimes, as now, it rushes forward, pitilessly, with a demon energy, ignoring our little wills and desires, making cruel mock of our petty selves, and tossing us about like straws on its turbulent waters, rushing on and on no one knows whither—to a great precipice which will shatter it into a thousand bits, or to the vast and inscrutable, stately and calm, ever-changing and yet changeless sea. ⁴

After the collapse of the Soviet Russia and its East European Block, cold-war ended and the U.S.A with its NATO allies are now world leaders. Prior to Second World War, Great Britain was the world leader,

This book is also an attempt to study the nature and behavior of master and arbiter of 80 big and small countries ranging from self-governing dominions to informal and formal colonies, covering an area of 11 million (one crore ten lac) square miles wherein 400 million (40 crore) subjects of Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas resided who recognized Great Britain as their sovereign power. This figure does not include the territories which Britain took control of certain German and Ottoman colonies in Africa and the Middle East after the First World War. At the end of the Second World War, Great Britain became weak and had to abandon her colonies in the face of world-wide national independence movements in all over her colonies, but she still maintains a close and workable relationship with her 76 erstwhile colonies in the shape of a ‘Common Wealth of Nations.’

Even though the leadership of NATO countries has shifted now from Britain to the U.S.A., they are close allies facing the challenges of their adversaries jointly. This group include Britain, the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and this is no strange that all these countries are having some ethnic similarities with the domination of ‘Anglo-Saxons.’ Americans (the U.S.A) are a mixed lot with English, Dutchmen, Germans, Danes and some Frenchmen, but the greatest number of them are the English people.

Similar was the case with Canada. The small population of Canada in the early 18th century was of Frenchmen, Anglo-Saxons and some tribes of Red Indians. In the middle of the 18th century, there was a world-wide war between England and France, known as the seven years war (1756-63), and it was fought not only in Europe, but in India and Canada also. England won the war, and France had to give up Canada to her. France was thus eliminated from North America and England controlled all the settlements in North America. In June 1768, under the command of Lieutenant James Cook (later captain Cook), a scientific expedition took place for Australia on the request of the Royal Society of Britain in the ship ‘Endeavour’. The ‘Endeavour’ made some more voyages from Britain to Australia along with a team of scientists and their helpers. The first British settlement made on Australian soil was due to the want of a place of banishment for criminals from the British isles. The loss of the American colonies in 1776, where convicts had been used to send to compulsory work in the plantations, had caused to British government to place the prisoners on board hulks and outlet was sought for these seething and unwholesome communities of crime. A place known as Botany Bay in south-east Australia was selected as fit for a penal colony. In may 1787, a fleet of eleven sail, commanded by captain Phillip, started from Portsmouth with nearly 8oo convicts, about 300 officials, guards and other free settlers. In January 1788, the expedition arrived at Botany Bay. This arrival of convicts and free settlers continued later on regularly and New South Wales, the first Australian colony grew in wealth and importance.

It was only by the slow degrees that the new colony received a large number of free emigrants from England and began to emerge from the state of a mere convict settlement. For more than thirty years the chief work done lay in the forced labour of criminals employed in clearing the woods, tilling the soil, constructing public buildings, making roads and clearing the land. Thus Australia emerged as a British dominion inhabited by the English people.

This book is also an attempt to study the nature and behavior of the English people during the course of their history and then to discover the causes of emergence of various innovative institutions on the British soil during the same period that made them not only invincible in the world but also placed them on the position of ‘Numero Uno’.

Here I would like to quote British historian Edgar Sanderson,

"We shall see in the history of England emphatically the history of progress. We shall see a great society of men and women, at the beginning of the 12th century, in a miserable and degraded state. They are subject to the tyranny of a handful of armed foreigners. A strong distinction of caste divides the victor from the vanquished. The great body of the people live in a state of personal slavery and are sunk in brutal ignorance, while the studious few are engaged in acquiring what hardly merits the name of knowledge. Seven centuries pass away. The wretched and degraded race have become the greatest and most highly civilized people that world ever saw, have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe, have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents of which no dim intimation had ever reached the old geographers Ptolemy and Strabo. They have created a maritime power which would annihilate in a quarter of an hour the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice and Genoa together; have carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion and correspondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, everything that promotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical. They have produced a literature which may boast of works not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, they have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, have speculated with exquisite subtlety on the operations of the human mind, have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of political improvement. The history of England is the history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, and physical state of the inhabitants of our own islands". ⁵

Questions arise in every thoughtful mind as; Is this their inherent quality in their blood that they shall always do innovative work, discover new things and invent new machines in every given conditions and continue to change the face of the world and elevate the human civilization to newer heights? Did only fate and circumstances make them world leader or did they really deserve it? What should be the role of other non-English civilizations of the world to perform in the face of English civilization? Should they meekly follow the path treaded by this world leader or learn a lesson from them and let their societies motivate and guide in the same fashion as the English people did earlier?

The answers to these questions lay in the search to locate the very motive force of these great people which led their civilization on the road to growth with dynamism. As I understand and feel, all humans are rational beings having different levels of rationality and they need some basic things in their life; these are

1. Food security and security of life;

2. Shelter and clothing;

3. Social equality and economic equity;

4. Political freedom with certain fundamental rights;

5. Life with dignity;

6. Freedom from fear and discrimination;

7. Progress and development in life.

Human history tells us that in order to achieve the above basic features, humans underwent into conflicts and wars with other fellow humans. Even if one feature among the above remains absent in any human civilization, its conflict shall not cease and its polity shall remain in turmoil. This is the motive force of history and this is no exaggeration to say that it has been only the British civilization in the world which was successful in achieving the above said features during the course of its 2000 years history. British people while exploring and discovering the world came into conflicts with other less developed civilizations of the world and in the process they gained an upper hand owing to their advance level of knowhow. The vanquished civilizations learned enough from them and adopted many features therefrom. British people called this phenomenon as their ‘civilizing mission’.

Nehru wrote;

Asia sprawls right across the map like a big, lumbering giant, Europe is small. But of course, this does not mean that Asia is great because of her size or that Europe is not worthy of much attention. Size is the poorest test of a man’s or a country’s greatness. We know well that Europe, though the smallest of the continents, is today great. We know also that many of her countries have had brilliant periods of history. They have produced great men of science who have, by their discoveries and inventions, advanced human civilization tremendously and made life easier for millions of men and women. They have had great writers and thinkers, and artists and musicians and men of action. It would be foolish not to recognize the greatness of Europe.⁶

Here what is true between Europe and Asia is also true between England and India. But in ancient times that is some 5000 years ago, when European civilizations were nowhere in existence, the Indian civilization and culture was so great and elevated as none other could match it.

Nehru further wrote;

Let us remember that it is Asia that has produced great leaders of thought who have influenced the world perhaps more than anyone or anything elsewhere—the great founders of the principal religions. Hinduism, the oldest of the great religions existing today, is of course the product of India. So also is its great sister—religion Buddhism, which now spreads all over China and Japan and Burma and Tibet and Ceylon. The religion of the Jews and Christianity and Islam are also Asiatic religions as their origin was in Asia. ⁷

Later, during the initiation of British rule in India, in 1784, Sir William Jones who was the first Supreme Court judge came to India, not only studied the works of Sanskrit scholars like Kalidas by earnestly learning Sanskrit language, but also translated some of their works into English for example Kalidas’s Abhigyan Shakuntalam, Meghdootam etc. He found the Hindu religion great and thought provoking.

More generally by their studies Jones and his successors made of Hinduism a great religion and repository of ancient wisdom, while India itself was given a glorious past comparable to that of Greece and Rome. Archeological discoveries in the first decades of the nineteenth century reinforced this conviction of India’s ancient greatness. ⁸

But Indian civilization could not maintain its glory and greatness after 1000 A.D and began to decline fast, as the seeds of its decline were within its own soil, the caste system was one of the greatest destructive forces among their other several causes; as Nehru wrote;

Instead of holding together the social structure, the caste system splits it up into hundreds of divisions and makes us weak and turns brother against brother. Thus caste helped in the past in strengthening India’s social system. But even so it had the seeds of decay in it. It was based on perpetuating inequalities and injustices, and any such attempt was bound to fail in the end. No sound and stable society can be built up on the basis of inequality and injustice or on the exploitation of one class or group by another. ⁹

An honest attempt has also been made by me in the Book to locate and pinpoint the main causes of social and cultural decline of India’s polity from high glory to sordid priest craft and superstitious rituals which made our social fabric so much moth-eaten and weak that it could not withstand a slightest push of aliens and crumbled to ground instantly. The blanket of abject slavery overshadowed it for centuries. The Book further investigates the strengths and weaknesses of other world civilizations and compares them with the Anglo-Saxon civilization pinpointing a qualitative difference between the former and Anglo-Saxon. The author of the Book also puts forward his own concept of social movement and change which he entitled as ‘Pendulum theory’ of Social change. He humbly invites further comments from scholars.

Lastly, the author underlines the need to relook at our present Indian polity which failed poorly to deliver economically, socially and politically, even after 66 years of Independence and pushing its people towards a state of anarchy. Corruption in every branch of activity from top to bottom has become a usual phenomenon and sky-rocketing prices of all commodities and high inflation have taken a heavy toll of every common Indian. Nehru was the main architect of post-independent polity. He was a great thinker, a far-sighted philosopher, a studious learner and an arduous freedom-fighter, having a great fascination for books. Nehru was a voracious reader and had a deep knowledge of history, both Indian as well as of world history. He was possessor of a luminous and radiant personality. All these qualities made Nehru like a ‘king’ in post-independent India and he was in a position to direct and dictate the policies beneficial for the people at large. His endeavour was to build India economically strong, politically having a firm democratic foundation with a non-discriminating dignified social order. He was very enthusiastic in encouraging young generation towards scientific awakening and converting India into a technology hub. He knew it very well that India’s backwardness could only be overcome by fast moving on the road to modern technology with a scientific outlook. He called the dams, factories and technology institutes as temples of modern India. But in the radiance and commotion of newly gained freedom and then the trauma of widespread bloodshed of innocent Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims on the eve of partition and problem of refugees made him so much bewildered and busy that he could not get time to give a thought to a major problem of India.

This was the problem of rapidly growing population of India by leaps and bounds. Though he was well aware of this problem as early as is 1930 and expressed his anxiety in his writings in ‘The Discovery of India’ and ‘Glimpses of world history’. Yet no serious efforts had been initiated during those early days, and since then this problem has totally been ignored by all succeeding political classes in India.

Consequently nearly 26 crore (260 million) human population at the time of Independence (after partition) now acquired a gigantic dimensions of 122 crore (1220 million) in 2012, touching nearly a five-fold jump. This jump in population has been nullifying all our efforts to modernize India with prosperity. Even then our political and social thinkers are oblivious of this menace and wasting their time and energy on other frivolous issues. Had they paid proper attention to this problem from the very beginning and planned to confine the population around 50 or 60 crore (500 or 600 million) till 2000 A.D, the picture of India might have been different today; as China has done since 1949.

Similarly, the system of parliamentary form of government opened the floodgates of corruption and money and muscle power backed politicians captured the positions of power and now plundering nation’s wealth to further steel their grip. Now, everywhere big scams are surfacing, involving thousands of corers of public money. Enormous amount of black money is in circulation within India and a big amount has been stacked in foreign banks abroad. It seems that a great storm of corruption has overtaken the whole Indian social sky and common folk of India is stifling in and dying of its overpowering dust and darkness. The combined effects of corruption, black money and a high jump of demand due to ever increasing population pressure catapulted the price line of all commodities to an unbearable height.

Nehru would never have thought for this day, for which he abdicated all physical and mental comforts and languished in jail for several years in his hey-days, lost his wife Kamala for national cause and left his daughter Indira unattended. Still there is scope for a ‘Rediscovery of India’.

M-653, SHWET-PADM

R.K SRIVASTAVA (SASHAKT)

AASHIANA, LUCKNOW-12

INDIA

18-08-2012

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CHAPTER ONE

GLORIOUS PAST OF INDIA:

MAIN FEATURES

INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

The age of India’s history is 5000 to 6000 years old as estimated by the historians. Very few civilizations of the world could match in age with that of India. Only Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and China have had their civilizations as ancient as that of India. India’s history starts from Indus Valley Civilization as we do not know anything prior to that period of history. This civilization was at full bloom about 5000 years ago. As Sir John Marshall, who led the excavation team in North West India in 1920s, tells us;

One thing that stands out clear and unmistakable both at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa is that the civilization hitherto revealed at these two places is not an incipient civilization, but one already age old and stereotyped on Indian soil, with many millenniums of human endeavor behind it. Thus India must henceforth be recognized, along with Persia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, as one of the most important areas where the civilizing processes were initiated and developed.

Cities were built to a plan. Houses were built of burnt bricks, with square courtyards, bathrooms and drains to carry the dirty water away. The streets were broad and straight so that chariots and bullock carts could move easily. In the words of Nehru,

the Indus Valley civilization, as we find it, was highly developed and must have taken thousands of year to reach that stage. ¹

When we compare the age of Indian history with that of British history, we find that 5000-6000 years ago the British history was non-existent. British history starts from the year 55 BC when the great Roman, Julius Caesar, the conqueror and governor of Gaul invaded the shores of England. Thus the age of British History is only 2000 years old. The socio economic conditions of the English people at that time were primitive one. They did not know the art of house construction and use of cotton never reached them at that stage.

The towns were mere gatherings of wattle or timbered huts, placed in a tract of woody country, and surrounded by a deep trench, with a further defense of felled trees. The tilling of the soil, in the more civilized south-eastern districts, the pasturing of cattle, and the hunting of the abundant game, were the chief means of living. ²

On the other hand, the Indus Valley Civilization was a highly advanced civilization of that period, and the Indus people were pioneers in founding an empire even before the establishment of Sargonid Empire in Mesopotamia and in all probability it was administered by a benevolent ruler with a secular outlook. Due credit should be given to the Indus Valley people for introducing a uniform system of civic administration, town planning, public sanitation, and enforcement of regulations of trade, introduction of weights and measures and standardization of all products suitable for internal and international trade. The most important building that has been found at Mohenjo-Daro was a great bath house. It had a watertight tank 39 feet long, 23 feet wide and 8 feet deep. It was set in a courtyard surrounded verandas and a number of rooms. It had flights of steps at two ends leading to the floor. There was a well to supply fresh water and a drainage to empty the tank. Nehru wrote in ‘Discovery of India’.

It is interesting to note that at this dawn of India’s story, she does not appear as a pulling infant, but already grown up in many ways. She is not oblivious of life’s ways, lost in dreams of a vague and unrealizable supernatural world, but has made considerable technical progress in the arts and amenities of life, creating not only things of beauty, but also the utilitarian and more typical emblems of modern civilization—good baths and drainage systems. ³

Planned cities, brick houses, clay pots, use of metals, woven cloth, toys and ornaments, may mean nothing much to us today, but just think of the world 5000 years ago. From what has been discovered, we know that in most part of the world, people living during that period were still wild and lived in caves, wearing animal skins, using stones for weapons and eating raw meat. The largest building excavated so far is one at Mohenjo-Daro with an area of 230x78 feet, which might have been a palace. At Harappa, a great granary has been found to the north of the city and this was raised on a platform of some 150x200 feet in area to safeguard it from floods. Most probably, it was used for storing the food grain collected from the peasants as land tax. They were not only master city planners, but also pioneers in developing their language, art, music, religion and script. Their script had some 270 characters, which were evidently pictographic in origin, but which had an ideographic or syllabic character.

"Whatever the case may be, pre-Aryan India made certain advances in husbandry for which the whole world owes her debt. Cotton was to the best of our knowledge first used by the Harappa people . . . Perhaps the most widely appreciated prehistoric India’s gifts to the world are the domestic fowl. Ornithologists are agreed that all domestic species descend from the wild Indian fowl. The Harappa people knew the domestic fowl, though its remains are few and it is not depicted on the seals. It was probably first tamed by Neolithic Indians in the Ganga Valley, whence it found its way by the Burma route to china, where it appears in the middle of the second millennium. The Egyptians knew it all about the same time, as a rare luxury bird. Clearly India, even at this remote period, was not wholly cut off from the rest of the world." ⁴

Thus, we can proudly declare that 5000 years ago, our Indus Valley Civilization was in a very advance stage and was as old as that of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia.

VEDIC CIVILIZATION

Without going into the controversy as to whether the Aryan people came from outside India or they were the original inhabitants of this land, and who destroyed the Indus Valley Civilization, whether by outside attackers or by any natural calamity, we shall evaluate the Vedic or Aryan civilization and culture and its contributions to mankind along with try to measure its depth of radiance in the contemporary world.

At a time, about 2000 years B.C when British history and civilization was still non-existent, and only Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Greece and Persian civilizations were thriving in the whole world of human settlements; the Vedic civilization took birth and became rich and mature. Much of our knowledge about Vedic civilization has been derived from four Vedas. The earliest and the most important among them was the Rig-Veda. In the words of Max Mullar,

The first word spoken by the Aryan man.

In the words of Nehru;

"The Rig-Veda, the first of the Vedas, is probably the earliest book that humanity possesses. In it we find the first outpouring of the human mind, the glow of poetry, the rapture at nature’s loveliness and mystery . . . Yet behind the Rig-Veda itself lay ages of civilized existence and thought, during which the Indus Valley and the Mesopotamian and other civilizations had grown. It is appropriate, therefore, that there should be this dedication in the Rig-Veda: To the seers, our ancestors, the first path-finders." ⁵

The Rig-Veda was followed by Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and then Atharva Veda. Rig-Veda is a collection of 1018 hymns divided into ten mandals. In Sama Veda, we find a collection of melodies, while in Yajur Veda, the hymns are like a guide book for the retuals. Atharva Veda is a collection of Hymns which describes the beliefs and superstitions of the early Aryans. Generally the hymns have been composed in four lines.