Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  It is strange to find that while the Arabs profited by their contacts with Indo-Aryan, Persian and Hellenic cultures, the Indians and Persians and Greeks did not profit much by their contacts with the Arabs. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the Arabs were new and full of vigour and enthusiasm, while the others were old races, going along the old ruts, and not caring over-much for change. It is curious how age seems to have the same effect on a people or a race as it has on an individual—it makes them slow of movement, inelastic in mind and body, conservative and afraid of change.

  So India was not greatly affected or much changed by this contact with the Arabs, which lasted for some hundreds of years. But during this long period India must have got to know something of the new religion, Islam. Muslim Arabs came and went and built mosques, and sometimes preached their religion, and sometimes even converted people. There seems to have been no objection to this in those days, no trouble or friction between Hinduism and Islam. It is interesting to note this because in later days friction and trouble did arise between the two religions. It was only when in the eleventh century Islam came to India in the guise of a conqueror, sword in hand, that it produced a violent reaction, and the old toleration gave way to hatred and conflict.

  This wielder of the sword who came to India with fire and slaughter was Mahmud of Ghazni. Ghazni is now a little town in Afghanistan. Round about Ghazni grew up a State in the tenth century. Nominally the Central Asian States were under the Caliph of Baghdad, but, as I have told you already, after Harun-al-Rashid’s death the Caliph weakened and a time came when his empire split up into a number of independent States. This is the period of which we are now speaking. A Turkish slave named Subuktagin carved a State for himself around Ghazni and Kandahar about 975 AC. He raided India also. In those days a man named Jaipal was Raja of Lahore. Very venturesome, Jaipal marched to the Kabul valley against Subuktagin and got defeated.

  Mahmud succeeded his father Subuktagin. He was a brilliant general and a fine cavalry leader. Year after year he raided India and sacked and killed and took away with him vast treasure and large numbers of captives. Altogether he made seventeen raids and only one of these—into Kashmir—was a failure. The others were successful, and he became a terror all over the north. He went as far south as Pataliputra, Mathura and Somnath. From Thaneshwara he took away, it is said, 200,000 captives and vast wealth. But it was in Somnath that he got the most treasure. For this was one of the great temples, and the offerings of centuries had accumulated there. It is said that thousands of people took refuge in the temple when Mahmud approached, in the hope that a miracle would happen and the god they worshipped would protect them. But miracles seldom occur, except in the imaginations of the faithful, and the temple was broken and looted by Mahmud and 50,000 people perished, waiting for the miracle which did not happen.

  Mahmud died in 1030 AC. The whole of the Punjab and Sindh was under his sway at the time. He is looked upon as a great leader of Islam who came to spread Islam in India. Most Muslims adore him; most Hindus hate him. As a matter of fact, he was hardly a religious man. He was a Mohammedan, of course, but that was by the way. Above everything he was a soldier, and a brilliant soldier. He came to India to conquer and loot, as soldiers unfortunately do, and he would have done so to whatever religion he might have belonged. It is interesting to find that he threatened the Muslim rulers of Sindh, and only on their submission and payment of tribute did he spare them. He even threatened the Caliph at Baghdad with death and demanded Samarqand from him. We must therefore not fall into the common error of considering Mahmud as anything more than a successful soldier.

  Mahmud took large numbers of Indian architects and builders with him to Ghazni and built a fine mosque there which he called the “Celestial Bride”. He was very fond of gardens.

  Of Mathura, Mahmud has given us a glimpse, which shows us what a great city it was. Writing to his Governor at Ghazni, Mahmud says: “There are here (at Mathura) a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of dinars, nor could such another be constructed under a period of 200 years.”

  This description of Mathura by Mahmud we read in an account given by Firdausi. Firdausi was a great Persian poet who lived in Mahmud’s time. I remember mentioning his name and the name of his chief work, the Shahnamah, in one of my letters to you last year. There is a story that the Shahnamah was written at the request of Mahmud, who promised to pay him a gold dinar (a coin) for every couplet of verses. But Firdausi apparently did not believe in conciseness or brevity. He wrote at tremendous length, and when he produced his many thousands of couplets before Mahmud, he was praised for his work, but Mahmud regretted the rash promise of payment he had made. He tried to pay him something much less, and Firdausi was very angry and refused to accept anything.

  We have taken a long step from Harsha to Mahmud, and surveyed 350 years and more of Indian history in a few paragraphs. I suppose much could be said of this long period which would be interesting. But I am ignorant of it, and so it is safer for me to preserve a discreet silence. I could tell you something of various kings and rulers who fought each other and sometimes even established large kingdoms in northern India, like the Panchala Kingdom; of the trials of the great city of Kanauj; how it was assailed and captured for a while by the rulers of Kashmir, and then by the King of Bengal, and later still by the Rashtrakutas from the south. But this record would serve little purpose and would only confuse you.

  We have now arrived at the end of a long chapter of Indian history, and a new one begins. It is difficult, and often enough wrong, to divide up history into compartments. It is like a flowing river: it goes on and on. Still it changes, and sometimes we can see the end of one phase and the beginning of another. Such changes are not sudden: they shade off into each other. So we reach the end of an act in the unending drama of history, as far as India is concerned. What is called the Hindu period is gradually drawing to a close; the Indo-Aryan culture which had flourished for some thousands of years has to struggle now against a new-comer. But remember that this change was not sudden; it was a slow process. Islam came to the north with Mahmud. The south was not touched by Islamic conquest for a long time to come, and even Bengal was free from it for nearly 200 years more. In the north we find Chittor, which was to be so famous in after-history for its reckless gallantry, becoming a rallying-point for Rajput clans. But surely and inexorably the tide of Muslim conquest spread, and no amount of individual courage could stop it. There can be no doubt that the old Indo-Aryan India was on the decline.

  Being unable to check the foreigner and the conqueror, Indo-Aryan culture adopted a defensive attitude. It retired into a shell in its endeavours to protect itself. It made its caste system, which till then had an element of flexibility in it, more rigid and fixed. It reduced the freedom of its womenfolk. Even the village panchayats underwent a slow change for the worse. And yet even as it declined before a more vigorous people, it sought to influence them and mould them to its own ways. And such was its power of absorption and assimilation that it succeeded in a measure in bringing about the cultural conquest of its conquerors.

  You must remember that the contest was not between the Indo-Aryan civilization and the highly civilized Arab. The contest was between civilized but decadent India and the semi-civilized and occasionally nomadic people from Central Asia who had themselves recently been converted to Islam. Unhappily, India connected Islam with this lack of civilization and with the horrors of Mahmud’s raids, and bitterness grew.

  52

  The Countries of Europe Take Shape

  June 3, 1932

  Shall we pay a visit to Europe now, my dear? When we were there last it was in a bad way. The collapse of Rome had meant the collapse of civilization in western Europe. In eastern Europe, except for that part of it which was under the Constantinople Government, conditions were even worse. Attila the Hun had spread fire and d
estruction over a good part of the continent. But the Eastern Roman Empire, though declining, had endured, and had even shown occasional bursts of energy.

  In the West things began to settle down in a new way after the shake-up which the fall of Rome gave. It took a long time to settle down. But one can just make out the new pattern as it develops. Christianity spreads, helped sometimes by its saints and men of peace, sometimes by the sword of its warrior kings. New kingdoms rise up. In France and Belgium and part of Germany the Franks (whom you must not confuse with the French yet) formed a kingdom under a ruler named Clovis, who ruled from 481 to 511 AC. This is called the Merovingian line, from the name of Clovis’s grandfather. But these kings were soon put into the shade by an official of their own Court—the Mayor of the Palace. These mayors became all-powerful and became hereditary mayors. They were the real rulers, the so-called kings were just puppets.

  It was one of these Mayors of the Palace, Charles Martel, who defeated the Saracens at the great battle of Tours in France in 732 AC. By this victory he stopped the Saracen wave of conquest and, in Christian eyes, he saved Europe. His prestige and reputation gained greatly by this. He was looked up to as the champion of Christendom against the enemy. The Popes of Rome were not then on good terms with the Constantinople Emperor. So they began to look up to Charles Martel for help. His son Pepin decided to call himself king and remove the puppet who was there, and the Pope of course gladly agreed.

  Pepin’s son was Charlemagne. The Pope was in trouble again, and he invited Charlemagne to come to his rescue. Charles did so and drove away his enemies, and on Christmas day 800 AC there was a great ceremony in the Cathedral when the Pope crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor. From that day began the Holy Roman Empire of which I wrote to you once before.

  It was a strange empire and its later history is stranger still, as it vanishes gradually, like the Cheshire cat in Alice, leaving just the smile behind with no trace of body. But this was yet to come, and we need not pry into the future.

  This Holy Roman Empire was not a continuation of the old Western Roman Empire. It was something different. It considered itself the Empire, the Emperor being boss over everybody else in the world—except perhaps the Pope. Between the Emperor and Pope there was for many centuries a contest as to who was the greater. But this also was to come later. What is interesting to note is that this new empire was supposed to be a revival of the old Roman Empire, when this was supreme, and Rome was said to be the mistress of the world. But to this was added a new idea—that of Christianity and Christendom. Hence the Empire was “holy”. The Emperor was supposed to be a kind of Viceroy of God on earth, and so was the Pope. One dealt with political matters, the other with spiritual. This was the idea, at any rate, and it was from this, I suppose, that the idea of the Divine right of kings arose in Europe. The Emperor was the Defender of the Faith. You will be interested to know that the English King is still styled the Defender of the Faith.

  Compare this emperor with the Khalifa or Caliph, who was styled the Commander of the Faithful. The Khalifa was really an emperor and Pope combined, to begin with. Later, as we shall see, he became just a figurehead.

  The Constantinople emperors, of course, did not at all approve of this newly-arisen “Holy Roman Empire” in the west. At the time that Charlemagne was crowned, a woman, Irene, had made herself Empress at Constantinople. She was the creature who killed her own son to become Empress, and things were in a bad way in her time. This was one of the reasons which emboldened the Pope to break away from Constantinople by crowning Charlemagne.

  Europe in the Ninth Century

  Charlemagne was now the head of Western Christendom, the Viceroy of God on earth, the Emperor of a holy empire. How pompous these phrases sound! But they serve their purpose by deluding and hypnotizing the people. By calling God and religion to its help, authority has often enough sought to fool others and increase its own power. The king and the emperor and the high priest become, for the average person, vague and shadowy beings, almost like the gods, far removed from ordinary life. And this mystery makes him afraid of them. Compare the elaborate codes and etiquettes and ceremonial of courts with the equally elaborate ceremonial of worship in temple or church. There is the same bowing and scraping and prostration—kow-towing, as the Chinese say. From childhood up we are taught this worship of authority in various forms. It is the service of fear, not of love.

  Charlemagne was the contemporary of Harun-al-Rashid of Baghdad. He corresponded with him, and—note this—he actually suggested an alliance between the two to fight the Eastern Roman Empire as well as the Saracens in Spain. Nothing seems to have come of this suggestion, but even so it throws a flood of light on the working of the minds of kings and politicians. Imagine the “holy” Emperor, the head of Christendom, joining hands with the Caliph at Baghdad against a Christian Power and an Arab Power. You will remember that the Saracens of Spain had refused to recognize the Abbaside Caliphs of Baghdad. They had become independent, and Baghdad had a grievance against them. But they were too far apart for conflict. Between Constantinople and Charlemagne there was also not much love lost. Here also distance prevented any actual fighting. None the less the proposal was made for the Christian and the Arab to join together to fight another Christian and another Arab Power. The real motives at the back of kings’ minds were those of gaining power and authority and wealth, but religion was often made the cloak for this. Everywhere this has been so. In India we saw Mahmud coming in the name of religion but making a good thing out of it. The cry of religion has paid often enough.

  But people’s ideas change from age to age, and it is very difficult for us to judge others who lived long ago. We must remember this. Many things that seem obvious to us today would have been very strange to them, and their habits and ways of thinking would seem strange to us. While people talked of high ideals, and the Holy Empire, and the Viceroy of God, and the Pope who was Vicar of Christ, conditions in the West were as bad as they could well be. Soon after Charlemagne’s reign Italy and Rome were in a disgraceful condition. A disgusting lot of men and women did what they liked in Rome and made and unmade Popes.

  Indeed, it was the general disorder in western Europe which had prevailed since the fall of Rome that induced many people to think that if the Empire were revived, conditions would improve. It became also a matter of prestige with many that they should have an emperor. One old writer of those days says that Charles was made emperor “lest the pagans should insult the Christians, if the name of Emperor should have ceased among the Christians”.

  Charlemagne’s Empire included France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, half Germany and half Italy. To the south-west of it was Spain under the Arabs; to the north-east were the Slav and other tribes; to the north the Danes and Northmen, to the southeast the Bulgarians and Serbians, and beyond them the Eastern Roman Empire under Constantinople.

  Charlemagne died in 814, and soon afterwards troubles arose for a division of the spoils of empire. His descendants, who are called the Carlovingians (Carolus, the Latin for Charles), were not up to much, as can be gathered from the titles of some of them: the Fat, the Bald, the Pious. From the division of Charlemagne’s Empire we now see Germany and France shaping themselves. Germany is supposed to date as a nation from 843 AC, and it is said that it was the Emperor Otto the Great, who reigned from 962 to 973, who made the Germans more or less a single people. France was already not part of Otto’s Empire. In 987 Hugh Capet drove away the feeble Carlovingian kings and obtained control of France. This was not much in the way of control, as France was divided up into big areas under independent nobles, and they often fought each other. But they feared the Emperor and Pope more than each other and united to resist them. With Hugh Capet France begins as a nation, and even in these early beginnings we can see the rivalry between France and Germany, which has endured for 1000 years, right up to our day. Strange that two neighbouring countries and peoples so cultured and highly endowed as the French and the Germans shou
ld go on nursing this ancient feud from generation to generation. But perhaps the fault is not so much theirs as that of the systems under which they have lived.

  About this time Russia also comes upon the stage in history. Rurik, a man from the north, is said to have laid the foundations of the Russian State about 850 AC. In the south-east of Europe we find the Bulgarians settling down, and indeed becoming rather aggressive; also the Serbians. The Magyars or Hungarians and the Poles also begin to form States between the Holy Roman Empire and the new Russia.

  Meanwhile, from northern Europe men came down in ships to the western and southern countries and burned and killed and looted. You have read of the Danes and other Northmen who went to England to harry and sack. These Northmen or Norsemen or Normans, as they came to be called, went to the Mediterranean, sailed up the big rivers in their ships, and wherever they went they robbed and killed and looted. There was anarchy in Italy, and Rome was in a deplorable condition. They sacked Rome, and threatened even Constantinople. These robbers and plunderers seized the north-west of France, where Normandy is, and South Italy and Sicily, and gradually settled down there and became lords and landowners, as robbers often do when they are prosperous. It was these Normans from Normandy in France that went and conquered England in 1066 AC under William, known as the Conqueror. So we see England also taking shape.

  We have now arrived roughly at the end of the first millennium or 1000 years of the Christian era in Europe. About this time Mahmud of Ghazni was raiding India, and about this time the Abbaside Caliphs of Baghdad were breaking up and the Seljuq Turks were reviving Islam in western Asia. Spain continued to be under the Arabs, but they were cut off completely from their homelands in Arabia, and indeed were not on good terms with the Baghdad rulers. North Africa was practically independent of Baghdad. In Egypt there was not only an independent government, but a separate caliphate, and for some time the Egyptian Caliph ruled over North Africa also.