Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  So began the series of revolts and insurrections against autocratic and dogmatic religion which were to spread all over Europe and divide it into rival camps, and which were to split Christianity into Catholic and Protestant.

  71

  The Fight against Authoritarianism

  June 30, 1932

  I am afraid you will find my accounts of religious conflict in Europe rather dull. But they are important, as they show us how modern Europe developed. They help us to understand Europe. The fight for religious freedom, which we see developing in Europe in the fourteenth century and after, and the fight for political freedom, which will come next, are really two aspects of the same struggle. This is the struggle against authority and authoritarianism. Both the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy represented absolute authority, and they tried to crush the spirit of man. The Emperor was there by “divine right”, even more so the Pope, and no one had the right to question this, or disobey the orders issued to him from above. Obedience was the great virtue. Even the exercise of private judgment was considered sinful. Thus the issue between blind obedience and freedom was quite clear. A great fight was waged in Europe for many centuries for freedom of conscience and, later, political freedom. After many ups and downs and great suffering, a measure of success was obtained. But just when people were congratulating themselves that the goal of freedom had been reached, they found that they were mistaken. There could be no real freedom without economic freedom, and so long as poverty remained. To call a starving man free is but to mock him. So the next step was the fight for economic freedom, and that fight is being waged today all over the world. Only in one country can it be said that economic freedom has been won by the people generally, and that is Russia, or rather the Soviet Union.

  In India there was no such fight for freedom of conscience because from the earliest days this right never seems to have been denied. People could believe in almost anything they liked and there was no compulsion.

  The method of influencing the minds of people was by argument and debate, and not by the club and the stake. There may, of course, have been compulsion or violence used occasionally, but the right of freedom of conscience was admitted in the old Aryan theory. The result of this was not wholly good, strange as this may seem. Being assured of a theoretical freedom, people were not vigilant enough about it, and gradually they got more and more entangled in the rites and ceremonials and superstitions of a degraded religion. They developed a religious ideology which took them back a long way and made them slaves to religious authority. That authority was not that of a Pope or other individual. It was the authority of the “sacred books” and customs and conventions. So while we talked of freedom of conscience and were proud to have it, we were really far from it, and were chained up by the ideas which had been impressed upon us by the old books and our customs. Authority and authoritarianism reigned over us and controlled our minds. The chains which sometimes tie up our bodies are bad enough; but the invisible chains consisting of ideas and prejudices which tie up our minds are far worse. They are of our own making, and though often we are not conscious of them, they hold us in their terrible grip.

  The coming of the Muslims to India as invaders introduced an element of compulsion in religion. The fight was really a political one between conqueror and conquered, but it was coloured by the religious element, and there was, at times, religious persecution. But it would be wrong to imagine that Islam stood for such persecution. There is an interesting report of a speech delivered by a Spanish Muslim when he was driven out of Spain, together with the remaining Arabs, in 1610. He protested against the Inquisition and said:

  Did our victorious ancestors ever once attempt to extirpate Christianity out of Spain, when it was in their power? Did they not suffer your forefathers to enjoy the free use of their rites at the same time as they wore their chains? . . . If there may have been some examples of forced conversions, they are so rare as scarce to deserve mentioning, and only attempted by men who had not the fear of God and the Prophet before their eyes, and who in doing so, have acted directly and diametrically contrary to the holy precepts and ordinances of Islam, which cannot, without sacrilege, be violated by any who would be held worthy of the honourable epithet of Musalman. You can never produce, among us, any bloodthirsty formal tribunal, on account of different persuasions in points of faith, that any wise approaches your execrable Inquisition. Our arms, it is true, are ever open to receive all who are disposed to embrace our religion; but we are not allowed by our sacred Quran to tyrannize over consciences.

  So religious toleration and freedom of conscience, which were such marked features of old Indian life, slipped away from us to some extent, while Europe caught up to us and then went ahead in establishing, after many a struggle, these very principles. Today, sometimes, there is communal conflict in India, and Hindus and Muslims fight each other and kill each other. It is true that this happens only occasionally in some places, and that mostly we live in peace and friendship, for our real interests are one. It is a shameful thing for any Hindu or Muslim to fight his brother in the name of religion. We must put an end to it, and we will of course do so. But what is important is to get out of that complex ideology of custom, convention and superstition which, under the guise of religion, enchains us.

  As in the case of religious toleration, India started off fairly well in regard to political freedom. You will remember our village republics, and how originally the king’s powers were supposed to be limited. There was no such thing as the divine right of the kings of Europe. Because our whole polity was based on village freedom, people were careless as to who was the king. If their local freedom was preserved to them what did it matter to them who was the boss above? But this was a dangerous and foolish idea. Gradually the boss on top increased his powers and encroached on the freedom of the village. And a time arrived when we had absolutely autocratic monarchs and there was no village self-government and no shadow of freedom anywhere from the top to the bottom.

  72

  The Passing of the Middle Ages

  July 1, 1932

  Let us look at Europe again from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. There seems to be a tremendous amount of disorder and violence and conflict. The conditions in India were pretty bad also, but almost one would think that India was peaceful compared to Europe.

  The Mongols had brought gunpowder to Europe and firearms were being used now. The kings took advantage of this to crush their rebellious feudal nobles. In this work they got the help of the new merchant classes in the cities. The nobles were in the habit of carrying on little private wars of their own amongst themselves. This weakened them, but it harassed the countryside also. As the king grew in power, he put down this private warfare. In some places there were civil wars between two rival claimants for the crown. Thus in England there was a conflict between two families, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. Each party adopted a rose for its emblem, one a white rose, the other a red one. These wars are therefore called the Wars of the Roses. Large numbers of feudal nobles were killed in these civil wars. The Crusades also killed off many of them. Thus gradually the feudal lords were brought under control. But this did not mean that power was transferred from the nobles to the people. It was the king who grew more powerful. The people remained much the same, except that they were slightly better off by the lessening of private warfare. The king, however, developed more and more into an all-powerful and autocratic monarch. The conflict between the king and the new merchant classes was still to come.

  More terrible than war and massacre even, there came the Great Plague to Europe about 1348. It spread all over Europe from Russia and Asia Minor to England; it went to Egypt, northern Africa, Central Asia and then spread westward. It was called the Black Death, and it killed off people by the million. About a third of the population of England died, and in China and elsewhere the death-toll was stupendous. It is surprising that it did not come to India.

  This awful ca
lamity reduced the population greatly and often there were not enough people to till the land. Owing to the lack of men, the wages of workers tended to rise from their miserable level. But the landlords and property-owners controlled the parliaments, and they passed laws to force people to work at the old miserable wage and not to ask for more. Crushed and exploited beyond endurance, the peasants and the poor revolted. All over western Europe these peasant revolts took place one after the other. In France there was what is called a jacquerie in 1358. In England there was Wat Tyler’s rebellion, in which Tyler was killed in front of the English King in 1381. These revolts were put down, often with much cruelty. But new ideas of equality were slowly spreading. People were asking themselves why they should be poor and starve when others were rich and had an abundance of everything. Why should some be lords and others serfs? Why should some have fine clothes and others not even rags enough to cover themselves? The old idea of submission to authority, on which the whole feudal system was based, was breaking down. So the peasants rose again and again, but they were weak and disorganized, and were put down, only to rise again some time later.

  England and France were almost continually at war with each other. From early in the fourteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth century there was what is called the Hundred Years’ War between them. To the east of France there was Burgundy. This was a powerful State, nominally vassal to the King of France. But Burgundy was a turbulent and troublesome vassal, and the English intrigued with it, as well as with other Powers, against France. France was for a while hemmed in on all sides. A good part of western France was for long in English possession, and the King of England began to call himself King of France also. When France was at the lowest ebb of her fortunes and there seemed no hope for her, hope and victory came in the form of a young peasant girl. You know something of Jeanne d’Arc (or Joan of Arc), the Maid of Orleans. She is a heroine of yours. She gave confidence to her dispirited people and inspired them to great endeavour, and under her lead they drove out the English from their country. But for all this the reward she got was a trial and sentence of the Inquisition and the stake. The English got hold of her, and they made the Church condemn her, and then in the market-place of Rouen they burnt her in 1430. Many years later the Roman Church sought to undo what had been done by reversing the decision condemning her; and long afterwards they made her a saint!

  Jeanne spoke of France and of saving her patrie from the foreigner. This was a new way of speaking. At that time people were too full of feudal ideas to think of nationalism. So the way Jeanne spoke surprised them and they hardly understood her. We can see the faint beginnings of nationalism in France from the time of Jeanne d’Arc.

  Having got the English out of his country, the French King turned to Burgundy, which had given so much trouble. This powerful vassal was finally brought under control, and Burgundy became part of France about 1483. The French King now becomes a powerful monarch. He had crushed or brought under control all his feudal nobles. With the absorption of Burgundy into France, France and Germany came face to face. Their frontiers touched each other. But while France was a strong centralized monarchy, Germany was weak and split up into many States.

  England was also trying to conquer Scotland. This too was a long struggle, and Scotland was often on the side of France against England. In 1314 the Scots under Robert Bruce defeated the English at Bannockburn.

  Even earlier than this, in the twelfth century, the English began their attempts to conquer Ireland. Seven hundred years ago that was, and since then there has been frequent war and revolt and terror and frightfulness in Ireland. This little country refused to submit to an alien domination and, generation after generation, has risen in revolt to proclaim that it will not submit.

  In the thirteenth century another small nation of Europe— Switzerland—asserted its right to freedom. It formed part of the Holy Roman Empire, and Austria ruled it. You must have read the story of William Tell and his son, but probably this is not true. But even more wonderful is the revolt of the Swiss peasants against the great empire and their refusal to submit to it. Three of the cantons revolted first and formed an “Everlasting League”, as they called it, in 1291. Other cantons joined them and in 1499 Switzerland became a free republic. It was a federation of the different cantons, and it was called the Swiss Confederation. Do you remember the bonfires we saw on many a mountain-top in Switzerland on the first of August? That was the national day of the Swiss, the anniversary of the beginning of their revolution, when the bonfire was the signal to rise against the Austrian ruler.

  In the east of Europe, what was happening to Constantinople? You will remember that the Latin crusaders captured this city from the Greeks in 1204 AC. In 1261 these people were driven out by the Greeks, who re-established the Eastern Empire again. But another and a greater danger was coming.

  When the Mongols had advanced across Asia, 50,000 Ottoman Turks had fled before them. These were different from the Seljuq Turks. They looked up to an ancestor, or founder of a dynasty, named Othman or Osman. Hence they were called Ottoman or Osmanli Turks. These Ottomans took refuge under the Seljuqs in western Asia. As the Seljuq Turks weakened, the Ottomans seem to have grown in power. They went on spreading. Instead of attacking Constantinople, as many others had done before them, they passed it by and crossed over to Europe in 1353. They spread rapidly and occupied Bulgaria and Serbia and made Adrianople their capital. Thus the Ottoman Empire spread on either side of Constantinople in Asia and Europe. It surrounded Constantinople, but this city remained outside it. But the proud Eastern Roman Empire of 1000 years was reduced to just this city and practically nothing more. Although the Turk was rapidly swallowing up the Eastern Empire, there appear to have been friendly relations between the Sultans and the Emperors, and they married into each other’s families. Ultimately in 1453 Constantinople fell to the Turks. We shall now refer to the Ottoman Turks only. The Seljuqs have dropped out of the picture.

  The fall of Constantinople, though long expected, was a great event which shook Europe. It meant the final end of the 1000-year-old Greek Eastern Empire. It meant another Muslim invasion of Europe. The Turks went on spreading, and sometimes it almost seemed that they would conquer Europe, but they were checked at the gates of Vienna.

  The great cathedral of Saint Sophia, which had been built by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, was turned into a mosque—Aya Sufiya it was called—and there was some plundering of its treasures. Europe was excited about this, but it could do nothing. As a matter of fact, however, the Turkish Sultans were very tolerant of the Orthodox Greek Church, and after the capture of Constantinople, Sultan Mohammad II actually proclaimed himself the protector of the Greek Church. A later Sultan, who is known as Suleiman the Magnificent, considered himself the representative of the Eastern Emperors and took the title of Caesar. Such is the power of ancient tradition.

  The Ottoman Turks do not seem to have been very unwelcome to the Greeks of Constantinople. They saw that the old empire was collapsing. They preferred the Turks to the Pope and the western Christians. Their experience of the Latin Crusaders had been bad. It is said that during the last siege of Constantinople in 1453 a Byzantine nobleman said: “Better the turban of the Prophet than the tiara of the Pope.”

  The Turks built up a peculiar corps, called the Janissaries. They took little Christian children, as a kind of tribute from the Christians, and gave them special training. It was cruel to separate young boys from their parents, but these boys had some advantages also, as they were well trained and became a kind of military aristocracy. This corps of Janissaries became a pillar of the Ottoman Sultans. The word Janissary comes from Jan (life) nisar (sacrifice)—one who sacrifices his life.

  In a similar way in Egypt a corps of “Mamelukes,” corresponding to the Janissaries, was formed. This became all-powerful, and even supplied the Sultans to Egypt.

  The Ottoman Sultans, by taking Constantinople, seem to have inherited many of the evil habit
s of luxury and corruption from their predecessors, the Byzantine emperors. The whole degraded imperial system of the Byzantines enveloped them and gradually sapped their strength. But for some time they were strong and Christian Europe was in fear of them. They conquered Egypt and took the title of Caliph from the weak and powerless representative of the Abbasides who then possessed it. From that time onwards the Ottoman Sultans called themselves the Caliphs till some years ago, when Mustafa Kamal Pasha put an end to it by abolishing both the Sultanate and the Caliphate.

  The date of the fall of Constantinople is a great date in history. It is supposed to be the end of one era and the beginning of another. The Middle Ages are over. The 1000 years of the Dark Ages end, and there is a quickening in Europe, and fresh life and energy are visible. This is called the beginning of the Renaissance—the rebirth of learning and art. People seem to wake up, as from a long sleep, and they look back across the centuries to ancient Greece, in the days of her glory, and draw inspiration from her. There is almost a revolt of the mind against the sombre and dismal view of life encouraged by the Church, and the chains that encompassed the human spirit. The old Grecian love of beauty appears, and Europe blossoms out with fine works of painting and sculpture and architecture.

  All this, of course, was not caused suddenly by the fall of Constantinople. It would be absurd to think so. The capture of the city by the Turks did just a little to speed up the change, as it resulted in large numbers of learned men and scholars leaving it and going West. They brought with them to Italy the treasures of Greek literature just when the West was in a mood to appreciate them. In this sense the fall of the city helped slightly in launching the Renaissance.

  But this was only a petty reason for the great change. The old Greek literature and thought was not a new thing in Italy or the West of the Middle Ages. In the universities people studied it still and learned men knew of it. But it was confined to a few, and because it did not fit in with the prevailing view of life, it did not spread. Slowly the ground was prepared for a new view of life by the beginnings of doubt in the minds of the people. They were dissatisfied with things as they were and searched for something which might satisfy them more. While they were in this state of doubt and expectancy their minds discovered the old pagan philosophy of Greece, and they drank deep of her literature. This seemed to them just the thing they sought, and the discovery filled them with enthusiasm.