Civilization: Historicizing a Concept in the Indian Context

Civilization is a concept that has drawn the attention of intellectuals within and outside of academia, and there are three broad interpretive frameworks that have emerged. Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru, considered the foremost Indian thinkers of the early twentieth century, presented a longue durée understanding of civilization while differing from each other on significant aspects. Tagore identified the civilizational ethos in India and China as rooted in those societies, and as contributing to the spiritual upliftment of the people. ¹ For him—‘eastern civilization was not political but social, not predatory and mechanically efficient, but spiritual and based upon all the varied and deeper relations of humanity’. ² He recommended a harmonious integration of the ideals of the eastern and western civilizations so that the human spirit could continue to flourish. In search of an indigenous definition of the term ‘civilization’, Tagore identified ‘sadācāra’ as conveying the idea of civilized norms, ³ and dharma as its closest equivalent in Sanskrit. ⁴ The latter referred to the essential quality of things that constituted a moral force, and Tagore saw this as providing strength and fostering the well-being of people.

Jawaharlal Nehru on the other hand saw a historical basis for the flow of ideas and cultural attributes that constituted Indian civilization, from the Indus Valley civilization to the Aryan migrations to the influence of the Iranians, Greeks, Hunas, Turks and Afghans, right down to the time of the British. ⁵ He distinguished between Indian civilization and Hinduism and preferred the usage of Hindi or Hindustani to refer to it. He saw the basis for a synthetic culture and civilization in India in the realm of ideas, locating it in the different philosophies that were developed, as also the scientific and cultural achievements. This was a process not restricted to ancient India, and it is particularly in the intermixing of people of different faiths and provenance that Nehru identified the continuity of Indian civilization. ⁶

Civilization became the template through which several influential studies were undertaken in the field of anthropology, and again we see the long view propounded in many of these. It is well-known that in the mid-twentieth century, the American state sponsored anthropological ‘area’ studies and South Asia became one of the major sites of research. ⁷ The identification of an Indian civilizational ethos that marked the life-worlds of the people in contemporary times, and that this could be traced back to earlier times, was central to most of these studies. But these works were quite different from the writings of Tagore or Nehru, in that there was a Hindu identity that was marked as the civilizational essence in India. This Hindu civilizational identity was neither monolithic nor was it static, and a model of ‘great and little tradition’ was used to identify continuity and change within it. Robert Redfield and Milton Singer, major proponents of this view, noted that the peasants or folk residing in villages inhabited a semi-autonomous domain forming the little tradition; at the other end of the spectrum was the synthetic cultural consciousness that had evolved over millennia that constituted the great tradition. ⁸ The latter was constituted, in this view, by the sacerdotal class and an ideological apparatus drawing legitimacy for sacred textual authority. Redfield elaborates:

It is in India that Great and Little Tradition are in constant, various and conspicuous interaction with the life of the local communities. It is there that the Great Traditions are in fact several; there the preeminent older tradition, the sanskritic, is itself a skein of related but distinguishable threads of teaching and institution. It is there that the teachings of reflective and civilized minds appear plainly in the festivals and in the ideals of peasantry. It is in India that a man’s ascribed status, in the form of caste, is closely associated with the claim of that caste to greater or lesser participation in the rituals and ideals of life as inculcated in sanskritic teaching. ⁹

This civilizational ethos was understood as having tremendous regional variation as well as historical depth, although despite the complexities and distinctions there was an overarching coherence that was identified and attributed to the brahmanical organizational edifice. ¹⁰ Further, using the broad framework, a disambiguation of the concepts of ‘universalization’ and ‘parochialization’ was suggested to understand the process of tradition formation, rendering it as not a top-down process but a two-way transformation. ¹¹

The anthropological models that have been used to define Indian civilization have been critiqued for their emphasis on the Sanskritic traditions as pan-Indian great traditions. ¹² Further, the brāhmaṇas were identified as the interlocutors of the tradition, and caste and other organizational mechanisms were understood as providing the glue holding together the diverse local little traditions. While the usefulness of the model in its broadest application to the study of the brahmanical, and possibly other, religious traditions has been pointed out, to denote a civilization on the basis of a singular religious identity has been considered inappropriate. ¹³ This is a useful distinction to make—religion and civilization need not be seen as synonymous even though the former may contribute significantly to defining the latter. While largely in agreement with the position that these models can contribute to the study of Indian religions (and not just the brahmanical traditions), there is a problem with the implicit assumption of the interaction between the little and great traditions as smooth and untrammelled by conflict or contestation. Nevertheless, the distancing of civilization from religion per se is of conceptual significance, particularly in the context of a pluralistic social fabric such as is found in India.

A crucial point is raised by Robert Miller in his rather harsh critique of Redfield’s model, which has a bearing on the manner in which the concept of civilization may be critically examined. ¹⁴ Miller argues that the very positing of a great tradition in the singular is flawed, as there may be several so-called great traditions that exist. Secondly, by creating a monolithic great tradition in the form of Hinduism, there is an assumption of relative homogeneity within it as well as its significant hegemony over the little traditions. The hegemonic projection by the purveyors of this great tradition, the brāhmaṇas, was in different contexts resisted or rejected by those outside the religious tradition as well as those who lay at the social margins due to the hierarchical ordering mechanism of the great tradition, namely the lower castes in the brahmanical varṇa-jāti structure. Singer’s analogy of the beast who is identified by blind-folded people by different names as examples of the little tradition is overturned in Miller’s argument; these differently named species were possibly the many great traditions that emanated from specific perspectival locations. ¹⁵ This is an important issue that resonates with the critique regarding the assumed unquestioning acceptance by marginalized sections with regard to their subordination and marginalization, allowing themselves to be assimilated into an exploitative and oppressive order; the critics argue that the civilizational matrix is understood only from a brahmanical perspective. ¹⁶ B. R. Ambedkar in his tract, Annihilation of Caste, refers to the foundation of civilized society on division of labour; in the Indian case, this took on an unusual form with the creation of caste as a means of hierarchically ordering occupational groups. ¹⁷ The caste system’s legitimacy rested on an ideological structure in the form of the brahmanical religion, bolstered by the authority of sacred texts and brāhmaṇa ideologues, which was rejected by Ambedkar. ¹⁸ He argued that Hindu civilization was certainly predicated on caste, but this should be recognized in terms of suppressing the lower castes as well as the ‘aboriginal’ tribes, and not simplistically as assimilation and accommodation. ¹⁹

Taking forward such an understanding, Kancha Ilaiah offered a ‘sudra’ (sic) critique of Hinduism by reversing the gaze, reminiscent of Miller’s suggestion, to argue that the lower castes may have been subsumed within the brahmanical caste structure and seen as hegemonized, but from their own perspective the lower castes often retained their autonomy and distinct world-views. The idea of a single enveloping great tradition, generally understood through the rubric of brahmanical religion is rejected here, and the possibility of parallel traditions—religious, social and cultural—that had their own spatial enactment is proffered. More recently, the conceptual framework of ‘protected ignorance’ has been enunciated to interrogate the process of knowledge formation, and particularly to critique the religio-cultural underpinnings of caste in the hegemonic brahmanical tradition. ²⁰ Caste is identified as an intrinsic element of Hindu civilization in the normative view, thereby perpetuating the discriminatory upper-caste epistemology of civilization. For Alone, the failure to critically examine such epistemes involves a deliberate suspension of rationality, which he terms as protected ignorance. ²¹ There are problems in the critiques of Ambedkar, Ilaiah and Alone as well with regard to the conceiving of civilization from a monolithic socio-religious perspective alone, or for that matter in projecting caste as static and unchanging over three millennia. ²² But they do pose significant questions about the constituting of civilizational digits in modern scholarship that perpetuate the hegemonic influence of traditional elites, in addition to portraying history from a brahmanical perspective.

Historians in India since the early twentieth century had engaged with the idea of civilization, but largely as a given, and invariably as Hindu. ²³ The colonial context for the reification of Hinduism as synonymous with Indian civilization, and the perpetuation of the view that the medieval period of Indian history had little to contribute to it has in recent years been recognized by scholars. ²⁴ Another issue that has been raised recently is the entrenchment of the idea of India as a geo-cultural entity from time immemorial, which is implicit in the categorization of Indian civilization. ²⁵ The modern nomenclature adopted for the country, Bharat, was linked quite simplistically in many historical works to the land that was described as Bhāratavarṣa in different Sanskrit sources. A critical examination of these sources revealed that the historical and sacred geography denoted by the term Bhāratavarṣa initially had its locus in north and central India, and that it only gradually evolved and expanded towards other regions such as peninsular India, but even then it did not conform neatly to the contours of the modern Indian nation-state. ²⁶ A point of significance to note is that most of the sources cited by scholars for an expansive understanding of the geo-cultural civilizational space were composed by brāhmaṇas or within the brahmanical tradition, and were generally written in Sanskrit. Another term to refer to the geo-cultural region also evolved—Hind or Hindustan, which was linked to the political and territorial exertions undertaken in medieval times, as also to the assimilations—social, religious and cultural that occurred in this period. While these have been recognized, the idea of the foundational aspect of the geo-cultural identity in ancient times has continued to be expressed in a number of works. ²⁷ For our purposes, these terms denoting some kind of historical geography of the sub-continent appear in specific political and religious contexts, and the historian rather than projecting the cartography of the nation into the past would do well to place the historico-geographical markers among the many elements that went into the constituting of national identity in modern India.

It was with the turn in historical analysis, away from dynastic accounts to socio-economic developments, that a serious engagement with issues of historical transformation, assimilation of people and traditions, integration of regions, and the evolution of social and ideological structures that supported the civilizational edifice in the making was visible. Civilization was identified in historical conjunctures, not merely in terms of religion and caste, but in a broad sense suggestive of socio-economic complexity, rich philosophical thought, scientific innovation and artistic efflorescence. Drawing upon the early twentieth-century archaeological understanding, expounded with great clarity by V. Gordon Childe, civilization has been taken to represent a watershed in human social evolution. ²⁸ Notwithstanding the colonial context of its conceptual clarification, that there is something identifiable as civilization, which in the Indian context has had a long life, is certainly accepted as is seen in several important historical works.

D. D. Kosambi, who pioneered the shift from dynastic history to the study of social formations from a Marxist perspective, commented that ‘a dispassionate observer who looks at India with detachment and penetration would be struck by two mutually contradictory features: diversity and unity at the same time’. ²⁹ For him, the ruling class in modern times was instrumental in establishing and preserving this apparent unity, despite the vast differences in language and culture that existed in different regions of the country. ³⁰ Equally, in premodern times, there was a hegemonic class that prevailed in different periods, that directed the civilizational flow but could not be seen as containing it, and the numerous and often contradictory elements in the realm of ideas, the varied knowledge systems and the diverse religious and cultural traditions were a testimony to this. ³¹

We may postulate that the historian’s methodology (and the archaeologist’s) provides us with the tools to engage with civilization as a concept in terms of a historical process. Kosambi, as we have seen, while recognizing the continued existence of multiple socio-cultural and religious traditions in and across contexts, argued that civilization emerged from the assimilations, contestations and transformations within various traditions. ³² This suggests that even where a continuum is identified, it does not denote an unchanging entity or a simple lineal evolution but the complex intermixing of new elements with the old, and in some instances a recasting of the whole. Here, the concept of culture, which is often yoked to civilization, may be clarified as referring to these aforementioned elements that go into the making of traditions, and indeed of civilization, where individuals, communities and societies create a complex engagement with their environment. This took the form of a defined ‘high’ culture propagated by the elites in society that tended to be accorded civilizational status, and the ‘low’ culture of the largely illiterate and disprivileged sections of society. ³³ The emphasis on civilization in scholastic and popular understanding tends to gloss over the cultural multiplicity by focusing on ‘high’ culture given the historical validation in the form of texts, monuments, etc., that are available. It is this equivalence of the high culture with civilization that has been referred to as ‘protected ignorance’ by Alone. Decades earlier, critiquing the idea of a civilizational higher mentality, Kosambi drew attention to ‘slums, world wars and massive colonial suppression and nuclear bombs’ that mark the so-called logical outcomes of civilizations. ³⁴ As we have argued earlier, a civilizational definition privileging activities of the mind and aesthetic values automatically leaves out vast sections of the population, especially in the premodern context, as well as glosses over the processes of subordination, exclusion and exploitation that accompany historical developments. Secondly, by opening up its definitional scope by not limiting it to a single language, religion or fixed territory, historians would be better placed to mark civilization and its so-called attainments from different vantage points.

Such an approach leads the historian away from the trumpet blaring about ‘achievements’, often articulated from a modern nation-centric perspective, be it in the fields of science, arts or ideas, and allows for a more fruitful discussion through a critical lens on epistemologies, influences and confluences. We would prefer to define this in terms of a plurality of civilizations within the Indian sub-continent, with temporal depth and historical context providing the foundation but not limiting their understanding. The four essays in this special issue, presented in the webinar organized by the Indian History Congress on 28–9 December 2020, grapple with methodological and conceptual challenges that face the historian and archaeologist when studying communities and individuals, as well as ideas and ideologies that contributed to the shaping of Indian civilization(s).

The essays by Rajan Gurukkal and V. Selvakumar focus specifically on archaeological methods and the limitations and possibilities for widening the scope of analysis and interpretations within the discipline. Gurukkal calls on the practitioners to move away from a material culture-centric approach in archaeology, where from the attribution of a modern place-name, as for instance Kulli or Ahar, to a ceramic typology, a label of ‘culture’ was imposed. The labelling seemed to suggest that an ethnic group could be identified with a certain kind of artefactual production, which Gurukkal terms as dubious because these generally do not represent anything unique, and it is possible that despite typological variation these could be considered a part of a composite whole, culturally. He makes an interesting distinction between artefacts such as pottery and burials for classifying sites; the latter clearly indicated unique customs, rites and practices, which can indeed be a marker of cultural distinction. The larger question that Gurukkal urges us to ponder over is the issue of definitional clarity while referring to ‘culture’, and to extricate it from the material artefacts per se to a larger plane of understanding specific ideational traits, even where there may be a certain variability in the material remains.

If Gurukkal argues for the identification of ‘composite culture’ and thereby civilizational indices in specific temporal locations, Selvakumar suggests that enveloping categories such as civilization resulted in the further invisibilizing of communities at the margins in the archaeological record. Gurukkal’s plea that the archaeological record needs to be theoretically bolstered through anthropological framing is fully addressed here. Selvakumar studies three different communities that are often relegated to the peripheries of historical scrutiny and assessment. The first is the Paḷiyar tribe who inhabit the hills of southern Tamil Nadu and the Kerala end of the Western Ghats, whose subsistence primarily depended on hunting and gathering. The other two were the Paṟaiyar and the Pulaiyar, who were relegated to the bottom of the caste hierarchy in the agrarian society, and provided the crucial labour in peasant regions. Other groups such as the Veṭṭiyāṉ and Pāṇaṉ also occupied the social margins even where their productive activities facilitated the economy. From the literary references in the Caṅkam corpus to the later representations in the early medieval literature and inscriptions, these communities were placed within certain spatial and occupational domains that were transformed with the expansion of state-society. Using archaeological evidence, buttressed by historical sources and the anthropologist’s methodological tools, Selvakumar presents a textured image of these communities that are often out of the reckoning in civilizational histories.

Kumkum Roy and Irfan Habib focus on the evolution of key ideas related to the socio-religious realm, albeit in quite different contexts, with the former focusing on a legendary character in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata and the latter on a great historical figure of medieval times. For Roy, Vidura represents a sage figure embodying wisdom and knowledge, particularly of dharmanīti, but is also characterized in an ambiguous way given his mixed parentage. He defines the ideal realm and the virtues of kingship, attempts to reconcile what seems to be irreconcilable, speaks up when dharma is threatened and sublimates his personhood for the larger good. His ideals are not exclusive nor discriminatory, allowing for accommodation and harmony, and in this sense, dharma, as embodied by Vidura, is not so much in the realm of ideas as in praxis. We may recall Tagore’s equating of dharma with the essence of Indian civilization; Roy recasts this deeply philosophical and polysemic idea as it appears in what has been considered a civilizational text in India.

The Mughal emperor Akbar has been the focus of many historical works, and his religious ideas as well as efforts to establish his ways of looking at religion drawing upon various sources and beliefs are well-known. Habib retraces the influences, ideas and acts that shaped Akbar’s religious views, which culminated in what people mistakenly thought was a new religion, the Dīn-i Ilāhī. His own bent towards orthodox Islamic views in his early years as ruler, his seeking of acknowledgement of his powers to be the highest adjudicator in all theological matters, the word play the orthodoxy found objectionable in greetings such as Allāhu Akbar, and his gradual estrangement from the orthodoxy are drawn out through a close reading of various Persian sources. Particularly interesting is Akbar’s quest for truth through reason rather than blind faith (imitation or taqlīd), after being drawn to philosophical ideas of transmigration of souls and Sufic ideas as well as to other faiths such as Hinduism, Christianity and Zorastrianism. The distinctive meaning of Ṣulḥ-i kul as absolute peace was developed to govern relations between people of different faiths and could be seen in his orders related to the Jains among others. Overall, Habib suggests that a simplistic reading of Akbar’s ‘religion’ would not be cognizant of the myriad influences on him, and the transformations thereon in his ideas and policies. Nehru, as we saw at the beginning, saw civilizational flows that continued in the medieval period of Indian history. Akbar’s reign for him represented the Indianization of foreign rule and the development of amity and tolerance among Hindus and Muslims. While Habib’s conclusion comes close to Nehru’s observations, he demonstrates the historian’s oeuvre in his layered reading of Akbar’s religious ideas, revealing core principles of faith and reason, the assertions of power and hegemony, as well as the assimilation of various religious doctrines into Akbar’s own reading of Islam.

Much more can, and needs to be said about civilizations from a historical perspective, as pseudo-historical views on their eternal and unique aspects, or theories of ‘clash of civilizations’ have come to occupy a significant space in the public domain. ³⁵ The essays in this issue propose the need to view civilization as a historically contingent construct that is multi-layered as well as hegemonic, and it is the historian’s task to demystify the concept and contextualize it.