THE FOG OF HISTORICAL WAR. How does the Indian past account for normative economic thought in modern-day India? In particular, the wide-scale acceptance of the alchemical notion that gold or money rather than labor is the source of value, leading to the devaluing of labor, the idea that cheap labor is an asset, and ultimately the hawking of cheap Indian labor on the international market as if it were like any other commodity. How does the Indian past also account for the conspicuous absence of the critique of the cheap labor strategy despite all the failure that has come from the slavish pursuit of it?

The trouble is any attempt to understand how the Indian past explains the present immediately runs into the problem of Indian history being a battleground for two competing narratives. According to Hindu nationalists, the first chapter of the subcontinent’s history begins in ancient times when the influence of a uniformly Hindu civilization cultivated a people who were more virtuous, civic-minded, and generally enlightened than their latter-day counterparts. In turn, this meant poverty was mostly unknown, people lived in harmony with the environment, and that in general life was less complicated.

But according to the pro-secular political opponents of Hindu nationalism, the so-called Hindu Golden age is nothing more than a myth designed to bring about the political mobilizations they seek. They argue the imagined glories of the Hindu past serve to beguile Hindus into following the nationalists’ banner. While the idea that the subcontinent was once a land of Hindus serves to justify the Hindu nationalist goal of doing away with India’s pluralistic, secular state, and replacing it with a Hindu state, what the nationalists refer to as a “Hindu Rashtra.”

According to the secularists, if such as state were to come into being, the outcome would be preferential treatment for Hindus, and everyone else would become second-class citizens, if not oppressed minorities. With this in mind, India’s high-profile historians, who like most establishment academics are closely aligned with the pro-secularist cause, have not been idle.

Instead, led by spokespeople such as Romila Thapar, Professor Emeritus of Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, they have been waging a robust and wide-ranging assault on the Hindu Golden Age narrative. For many pro-secularists Thapar is the greatest historian ever produced by the Republic of India. And her outspoken assault of the Golden Age narrative has made her a bête noire in the eyes of Hindu nationalists.

For example, Thapar never tires of pointing out that the very word Hindu as a term of religious affiliation does not even occur in Indian sources until late in the 14th century A.D.1 Furthermore, Thapar argues that rather than denoting a single monolithic religion with a uniform system of belief, Hinduism is best understood as an umbrella term for “a variety of sects, belief systems and ritual practices.”2

Thus, essentially the organizing principle of her critique is an assault on the very idea of continuity between the Hindu past and present, upon which the Hindi nationalist narrative depends.

For the vast majority of people religion was an open-ended experience-a mixing, merging, overlapping, borrowing or rejecting of forms ideas beyond formal labels. Religion for [the] larger population lay in forms of personal devotion, in the worship of spirits within trees and mountains, nagas, yakshis and ancillary deities of local cult shrines, in listening to the words of the bhikkus and the Nayannars and Alvars, the Bhakti and Sufi teachers, to the stories retold from the epics and Puranas, and to the conversations of those who congregated around gurus, faqirs, pirs, and other ‘holy men’, agreeing or disagreeing on the essentials of understanding the purpose of life and the meaning of death. There were the grand temples, mosques and churches to be visited for prayers, except the temples were not open to all. Ritual and belief, because they mixed caste practices and the norms of one’s sect, differed among communities that we now refer to as Hindu.3

As for those who point to all the continuity in ritual, beliefs, and practices to be found in Hindu religious text down through the ages, Thapar is quick to point out that appearances can be deceiving, given the divergence between documented evidence and what was actually being practiced.

The religion (Hinduism) is however among the most ancient but with a remarkable continuity in some of its features, unlike others. The study of what is regarded as Hindu philosophy and its religious text and beliefs has been so emphasized as to almost ignore those who are the practitioners of these tenets, beliefs, rituals and ideas.4

But in reality what appears to be a fairly solid and reasonable argument, is anything but. To start with, Thapar fails to address the argument that Hindus would simply not have needed a term to differentiate themselves with other groups, and vice versa, other than to refer to them as foreigners and barbarians, until such time as both communities were living side by side. Thus, the emergence of the term Hindu coincides with the time that the Muslim communities, whose members coined the term, had established themselves in the subcontinent, and were living among the adherents of pre-existing beliefs.

Furthermore, as with India’s economic commentators and their blindness to the relationship between low wages and low productivity, once again we have a crude material calculus at work. In this case, Thapar’s inability to look beyond differences in belief, ritual and documentary evidence to realize that what she takes for granted, i.e. the widescale acceptance of a polytheistic religious landscape, is itself evidence of enormous continuity at the level of the shared philosophical beliefs that underpin the culture.

For the same reason, it’s reasonable to assume that despite differences in belief, ritual, and even language, a traveller from the far north of the subcontinent to its uttermost south would feel no more out of place than an Englishmen during the middle ages who found himself in a far flung corner of Christendom – particularly when the shared mythology and canon of literature that Thapar refers to is taken into account.

Meanwhile, Thapar can’t help but acknowledge still more continuity when she decries the “centrality of caste” throughout the subcontinent’s past.5 The same is true when Thapar admits that since ancient times a brahmin priest caste has continuously been present asserting their moral authority – a fact that is impossible to deny given they are mentioned in travelogues going back as far as the account left by Megasthenes, the Greek diplomate who journeyed to the subcontinent in the 3rd century BC.

What is equally undeniable is that whether or not the authority of the brahmins was accepted, everyone internalized and jockeyed for position within the caste hierarchy that the brahmins presided over and legitimized. As Thapar confirms, the influence of the system was so pervasive that it was even internalized by adherents of religions that ostensibly rejected caste.

All religions – indigenous or immigrant – internalized caste. Those who converted to religions promising social equality ended up carrying the baggage of caste with them. An entire village might convert, as for example in recent years when Dalits converted to the neo-Buddhism advocated by Ambedkar, (nevertheless caste hierarchies continued to be observed)… Or take the case of Islam where Muslim society was also fragmented. Muslims claiming ancestry from west Asia are of a higher caste than local converts. Despite both being Muslims there is still a distinction in caste. The ranking of caste according to occupation is also observed as it is in all religions in India … At the lowest level were the Dalit Muslims, like their Hindu counterparts continued to be treated as polluting and were often denied burial in the graveyards of high-caste Muslims … Every religion in India has its Dalits and OBCs (Other Backward Castes).6

Furthermore, while Thapar never tires of provoking her opponents by pointing out that the terms Hindu and Hinduism are, by subcontinental standards, relatively modern terms, at other times she nevertheless must admit that they are based on the older term “Sindhu,” which is “the Indo-Aryan/Vedic Sanskrit name for the Indus river.”7 In other words Hindu is a corruption of Sindhu, meaning people of the Indus and beyond, which is a term of such antiquity that its origins are lost in the mists of time.

In reality, the connection means that while “the known history of the Hindu religion can be traced back to Vedic Brahminism from the late second millennium BC and winds its way through a variety of sects, belief systems, and ritual practices to the present,” the etymology of “Hinduism” means that it’s not unreasonable to trace it all the way back to having first connoted the people of the earliest known civilizations of the subcontinent, such as were located at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, collectively referred to as Indus valley civilizations.

The only fig leaf behind which Thapar can hide in order to avoid admitting what appears to be an eminently reasonable case for connecting Hindus, Sindhus, and the people of the Indus valley civilization is the disqualification of reason itself as an autonomous means of interrogating the past. Instead, her empiricism demands the discovery of an archaeological missing link, some form of Rosetta stone that may never be forthcoming, or else clear cut enough to meet with the approval of pro-secularist academics.

Some scholars of the history of Hinduism would trace it back to the Indus Civilization but little is known for sure about this. Suggestions have been made some of which link it to the later religion and some do not. Once the pictograms are deciphered, then there might be more knowledge about the religion of this civilization and whether it forms a prior history of the later religion.8

But perhaps what most undermines Thapar’s war on the historical continuity of the subcontinent and the “sweeping generalizations” upon which the Hindu nationalist narrative is based is the fact that she herself routinely puts the campaign on hold whenever it suits her, which generally means whenever it interferes with her ability to attack her political opponents. For example, in the article They Peddle Myths and Call it History, authored by Thapar for the New York Times, she writes:

The (Hindu) claim to victimization is ironic given that the worst form of victimization – declaring the lower castes to be so polluted as to be untouchable – was practiced by upper-caste Hindus for 2,000 years, including through the period when they were supposedly being victimized.9

As such, try as the secularists may, ultimately it’s easy to understand why at some level or other nobody really buys their war on the historical continuity of Hinduism. Particularly since the secularists themselves can’t help tripping over their own deconstructionism every time they switch from claiming there isn’t enough continuity to support the Hindu nationalist narrative to denouncing the Hindu record of caste-based oppression.

BACK ON THE TRAIL OF THE HINDU GOLDEN AGE

Thus, with the secularist historians doing such a good job of undermining their own arguments, the possibility remained that there might be some truth to the Hindu nationalist narrative, including the claim that a Hindu Golden Age had once existed. After all, Megasthenes himself had claimed that slavery did not exist in India. But what did Megasthenes mean by slavery? There are many forms of slavery, and it’s possible Megasthenes had some crude form of chattel slavery in mind, such as the Helotry that existed in more barbaric regions of the Peloponnese. On this point this author is in agreement with Thapar when she writes, “It is possible that Megasthenes, having the Greek conception of slavery in mind, did not recognise the Indian system, which was different from that of the Greeks.”10

Added to which, it couldn’t have been any harder back then than it is now for a ruler to hide from the ambassador of a foreign land that which he did not wish him to see.

As such, when I did finally begin to take the claim seriously that a fabled Hindu Golden Age had once existed, it was not due to Megasthenes account, but rather when I first encountered the condemnations of usury by the earliest known Hindu lawgivers.

This is because the term “usury” is part of the lexicon of moral pronouncements on economic practices, unlike terms like “compound interest” or “loan,” which convey no additional meaning beyond the mechanical description of the financial practice in question.

Thus, the use of the term usury by India’s ancient Hindu lawgivers confirms that despite the fact that a money economy had existed in the subcontinent since as early as the fifth century B.C., in which loans were given both in cash and in kind,11 the ancient Hindu lawgivers, unlike their 21st century counterparts, hadn’t forgotten that economics is a school of moral philosophy.

However, to what extent they understood the arguments against allowing the charging of compound interest is unclear. For example, it’s difficult to discern whether India’s ancient lawgivers understood that the normalization of usury inexorably leads to such a concentration of wealth in the hands of the usurers that their power and influence inevitably become so great that even the ruling class became subordinated to their will. While the culture itself, including its normative morality and the philosophy that underpins it, becomes equally subordinated to the task of rationalizing usury in order to maintain the unjust status quo.

Neither is it clear whether they understood that the claim that charging compound interest is fair recompense for risk incurred by the money lender is baseless, given that like a gambling operation, the cost of risk is factored into the interest rate. In addition to which the lender expects his returns regardless of the fortunes of the debtor. Unlike, for example, equity finance, which can be considered a legitimate economic practice because it does involve shared risk. The investor gains if the venture does well. Conversely, if it fails, he can lose out. While the very existence of the equity finance model refutes the assumption that without lending money at interest there would be no means of raising capital.

In fact, the usurer can positively gain when a debtor fails to repay their debts, given the power and influence that comes with the concentration of wealth in the hands of the usurers inevitably allows them to bring about regulations that favor them in such scenarios, such as by allowing them to take ownership of the debtor’s assets. While the same laws that ensure the usurers are made whole or even profit when the debtor defaults also ensure that the employees of the defaulter have no prospect of recouping what is owed to them after having been made redundant. Instead, the usurers are always first in line with free rein to plunder whatever assets remain.

The predatory nature of usury becomes even more apparent when the usurer is free to play a double game by backing the competitors of a debtor, thereby accelerating the demise of the debtor and the acquisition of his assets and setting the stage for segment by segment control of the economy.

Which is another reason why the claim that there is such a thing as the usury cycle is not a figment of the imagination, but a category of reality, one that begins with the normalization of usury, and ends with the economic and political hegemony of usurers, and the concomitant degeneration of the moral and philosophical fabric of the culture in order to rationalize the unjust status quo.

The extent to which all of this was understood by India’s ancient lawgivers remains unclear. What is clear from their condemnations is that they understood charging compound interest is a form of usury and one that can be used as an instrument to enslave individuals and whole societies as surely as by using the sword.

Furthermore, not only are the references to usury in the subcontinent some of the oldest in historical record, but also the most vehement in their condemnation of it.

For example, while Aristotle likened usurers to those who ply sordid trades such as pimps, his contemporary in the subcontinent, Vasistha, likens usury to murder. In fact, he suggests usury is worse than murder because according to Vasistha, when a usurer and the murderer of a holy man are weighed on the scales of justice, the murderer of the holy man rises to the top while “the usurer trembles.” Similarly, the 5th century lawgiver, Baudhayana, compares usury with the murder of the unborn child and concludes that usury is worse!

Thus, given the understanding of the relationship between economics and morality and the vehement condemnation of usury, it is easy to understand why some might take them for clues that the idyllic Hindu Golden Age may well once have existed.

But look closer and what becomes apparent is that there is an insincerity about the condemnations. It turns out their excessive nature serves to cover over the fact that neither lawgiver was prepared to put their pronouncements into practice – it was a case of “the lawgiver doth protest too much,” as Shakespeare might have put it.

Vasistha was only prepared to prohibit Brahmins from lending money at interest while permitting the vaisya (merchants) to do so within stipulated rates. Baudhayana permitted both vaisya and kshatriya (warriors) to do the same, provided the debtor was a degenerate of some kind, such as an extremely wicked man, an atheist or a homosexual.

As is typical of partial prohibitions, the exceptions were the thin end of the wedge that opened the flood-gates to the wide-scale normalization of usury. It is no surprise then that by the 9th A.D. the commentator, Medhatithi, was arguing that because the god Vasistha, who possessed knowledge of all the three ages and was therefore immune to greed, accepted interest at the rate of 1/80th of the principle, it followed that Brahmins were also justified in doing the same.

By the 12th century, Brahmins no longer needed to rely on such cynical justifications thanks to the explicit permission the authors of the Garuda Puran gave Brahmins to engage in money-lending on the basis that, unlike agriculture, which is hampered by want of rains, royal terror, and the predations of mice, etc, interest keeps on growing at all times and under all circumstances.12

[…] This is just an excerpt from the February 2021 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!