When riseth Lacedemon's Hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then may'st thou be restored ; but not till then.
The Friend of India, Feb. 1857:
"Sati & widow celebacy are abolished. Polygamy is doomed & what Hindu knowing all this raises a hand? There is no heart left in the creed, and though it may exist for generations yet, as corpse of Roman paganism did, its downfall is assured..."
IF it is true, as Pope says, that the proper study of mankind is man, it is no less true that the proper study for a Hindu living in the twentieth century and conscious of the forces working round him, is the study of the history of the Kshatriya. The future "has its roots in the past says Lord Morley. It is the past that in its results is present in the present and will to a certain extent, shape the future. The law of causation is inevitable and unerring. Those who are vitally Interested in the present and the future welfare of the Kshatriya Royals, as well as those whose interest in the matter is merely intellectual, find the history of the Rajput's, their culture and civilization, their social and spiritual ideals and their practical philosophy of life, a subject of absorbing interest.
All serious students of the history of sociology have before them the extraordinary historical phenomenon of a great race, which occupying at the dawn of history a high position in the world and having survived all the political cataclysms, social upheavals and racial eruptions that engulfed powerful nations and destroyed old world empires, still shows in no uncertain degree, spiritual and moral vitality. This amazing vitality of the Rajput race compels the attention and challenges the interest of all who study the evolution of man or of human society.
The Rajaputra families naturally traced their own history back to the origin of their individual clans, which in turn were branches of older clans, going back to the Vedic era. They carry the historical baggage of several millennia down to the 20th Century and today all the positives and negatives from this long span of Indian History are applied to them.
However since the positives of the Rajputs (relating to their resistance to the Islamist onslaught) have been described here only after the actual rise of the Rajaputra families, it’s only fair to also look at the negatives, but from this later period alone.
Failure to form an empire
The Rajput state was formed by one dominant clan. If that particular clan was successful and managed to extend its territories, other clans came under its rule—but even then the structure of the state was dominated by the original ruling clan. This prevented most Rajput states from extending their kingdoms into large empires—the Rajput state that came closest to forming an empire was the Kingdom of Mewar in the 16th Century.
The ruling Sesodia clan was served by Hadas, Rathors, and Jhalas; other ruling clans that had been devastated by the Turk invasion were left to their lot as common farmers. The Sesodias remained in the dominant positions of the state and in the army—but as the state expanded further, the population of the ruling clan could never be able to keep pace and would soon become a minority even in the combined Rajput population! This prevented Rajput clan-states from staking claims to empire unless they commanded a coalition of other states—the limitations of such coalitions are given below.
Command and control of coalitions
Like every other community of clans and states, the Rajputs have formed coalitions to fight off a common threat. Some of these coalitions have failed, like the Chaulukya-Parmar union against Qutb-ud-din Aibak, but others have been successful, like the Chaulukya-Guhilot alliance against Sultan Balban. In the earlier case the clans assembled at one place and fought as one unit…but in the latter instance the allies fought separately from their own bases (which were hundreds of miles distant) and only coordinated their movements against the Turks.
Camping in one place, marching together, and forming for battle brings up issues of the command and control of the different clan-armies. This invariably gives rise to jealousy and can lead to quarrels that break up the order of the allied army—this is also seen in military campaigns of other cultures. In the 13th Century the allied Russian princes, similarly camping and marching together to the Battle of Kalka River, began quarreling and soon lost that fight to the Mongols.
Such jealousies and quarrels are far more magnified in the Rajput clans but for a very sound reason. In their ferocious response to the Islamist aggression, when they saw their cherished faith being uprooted, the Rajputs clung desperately to their clan-identity. They even gave up their lives for it. This caused a heightened sense of clan purity, which in turn led to ideas of clan supremacy (over the Muslim invader and over other Rajput clans), laced with the steely determination of not submitting to others.
Related to this is the ability to raise a large army at short notice. The Turk invaders, and even the Marathas and Sikhs commanded large armies on the strength of their ability to pay these soldiers. An ambitious chieftain, when initially successful in a military campaign, could then attract other soldiers to his side and command them into battle for the sake of money. But a Rajput chieftain had to be dependent only on his clan—even if successful he could not recruit soldiers from other clans since the whole notion of clan supremacy would then be overthrown. The only way for a Rajput commander to recruit other Rajput clans was by negotiating with their chieftains—this was how the Mughal Empire under Akbar brought the Rajput clans into their army. But even when fighting together in these armies, the clans were driven purely by self-interest as illustrated in the [Battle of Dharmat]
Preference for legend and romance
The bard ( bhat ) was the most crucial member of every Rajput army. He sang out loud the valiant deeds of their forefathers to inspire the warriors into making the fiercest exertions in battle. The bard was also an observer of events but he did not make a historical record…rather such events were related in poems, which were passed down through generations of bards by word of mouth.
Legendary and romantic stories are easier to relate in poetic form hence Rajput history is full of these stories, which today have been faithfully reproduced in the Amar Chitra Katha series. But even in an earlier age myth and legend managed to unseat bland historical fact—the evolution of the Agnikund legend will illustrate this point.
The Parmar clan ruled from Dhar (in modern Madhya Pradesh) in the 10th Century…their earliest epigraphic record is the Harsola grant, which relates that these Kings were born in a family of the Rashtrakutas (in the Deccan). But sometime later, as the power of the clan increased, the poet Padmagupta Parimal created a legendary story for his patrons:
The Vedic sage Vasishtha had a wish-fulfilling cow called the Kamadhenu , which was stolen by his rival, the sage Vishvamitra. To recover it Vasishtha made offerings to a sacrificial fire on the heights of Mt. Abu while chanting holy verses…a warrior emerged from the fire and recovered the cow for his creator. In acknowledgment of his immense service Vasishta named this warrior Paramar, which means enemy-slayer ( para-maar ).
This legend, being so exciting to hear and read, was now inscribed on all subsequent Parmar records. Their original statement of belonging to the Rashtrakuta family was lost for a long time until the said Harsola grant was recovered and translated in the 19th Century. But before that the legend went through another twist in the 16th Century…by this time the power of the Parmars had gone and new clans (Sesodias and Rathors) dominated the landscape of that region. In this period the Prithviraj Raso of Chand Bardai related another version of this legend which gave pride of place, not to the Parmars but to the Chauhans (and which subsequently became the most popular legend):
Vasishtha kindled a fire-pit ( agnikund ) at Mt. Abu to create warriors for fighting off the demons. The first to emerge was the Pratihar; he was placed to guard[3] the sacred site. A second emerged from the chullu (palm) of the sage and was called the Chaulukya. The third warrior eagerly sought out the demons but could not prevail over them—he was called the Pra-maar (first-striker), which evolved later into Parmar. The fourth warrior carried weapons in four arms and destroyed the demons—he was called the Chauh-maan because of this.
In another version of this story, the sage Vishvamitra is substituted for Vasishtha suggesting that the root of this story is derived from the earlier legend of the Parmars. The origins of the names of the four clans that are given in this legend are not based in history or accurate linguistics. Unfortunately, such legends became the stuff of Rajput history.
Interestingly the colonial historians, who normally rejected legendary stories in their works, immediately latched on to this legend. But in their version, they substituted Vasishtha with “the Brahmins” and the demons with “Saka and Hun invaders”. They also suggested that the warrior clans emerging from the fire were Hinduised foreigners…ignoring the basic fact that the earlier legends were created merely to glorify that particular clan and the date of the even the earliest legend was 500 years too late to tally with the Hun invasions!
So the Rajput preference for legend and romance, which can be seen in other examples, has dropped a shroud over their actual history and has been used by their modern detractors to discredit and manipulate their origins in which their chequered career as the Rajputs nation during the last thousand years furnishes abundant materials to a historian to be able to trace and well appraise the influence of spiritual ideals on the political life of a Rajputs, as also the effect of their social beliefs and practices on it. He will see how the wholesome influence of a highly intellectual culture and spiritual ideals governing the ordinary life of a civilized nation are checked, modified and marred by evil customs, pernicious practices and wrong and narrow social ideals, which create distraction, division and disunion.
Bharata, the most fertile and favoured of climes, in all ages the cynosure of all eyes, has been the centre of gravity in the world's affairs. Seekers after truth, and the spiritually inclined from Greece, Persia, China and other countries, like Pythagoras, Pyrrho, Democritus of Thales, Fa-Hian, Hiouen-Thsang and Alberuni came to Bharata to learn wisdom: the worldly-minded to get the good things of the world. "The gorgeous East" and "Wealth of Hindus" of Milton, "Bharat, the sole mother of precious stones" of Pliny, the "Golden India" of Alexander the Great stirred the imagination of the Europeans in all ages. Its fabled wealth fired the ambition of powerful rulers of distant lands and attracted the adventurers and free-booters of Asia from Semiramis and Alexander to Mahmud Ghaznavi, Changez Khan, Timur and Ahmad Shah Durrani.
Rajput Warriors repelled the earlier invasions and the enemy returned home beaten and battered or perished on the way foiled in his attempt. Semiramis, Alexander and Seleucus are instances in point. Later attempts partly or wholly succeeded as the internal dissensions in Bharata increased and developed. Most of the invaders of the first few centuries of the Christian era, however, who came to conquer remained to worship. Victorious Rome
was held captive by vanquished Greece: Bharata did better still. It absorbed the invaders and made them its votaries, as the history of the Bactrian Greeks, Huns, Kushans, Kshtrapas and Shakas (Scythians) amply shows.
But a time at last arrived when a new school of
social thought arose in Bharata with a vision blurred and an outlook, narrow, limited and exclusive. It rejected the simpler, purer, higher ideals of life inculcated by the earlier Sages and Thinkers of Bharata. In this constant defensive warfare taking shelter under the cover of mistaken notions of heredity, conservation of spiritual energy, and preservation of the purity of blood and culture, it introduced in Hindu society a spirit of exclusiveness and disruption that began to destroy the solidarity of the Sanatani race and weaken its power of resistance. The disruptive forces once set in motion continued to gather strength, with the result that the social organisation of the country deteriorated and the political ideals of the people became degenerated; for the ideas of nationality and independent national existence became dimmed. The consequence was that the foreign invader obtained a more or less firm footing in the exposed parts of India; their advent and presence in the country being due to dissensions and disunion amongst the Rajput Rulers.
The early Arab raids in Sindh and the free booting expeditions of Mahmud Ghaznavi, while giving a precarious foothold to the foreign enemy in the Western regions of Bharata made little permanent impression on the heart of the country. But it proclaimed to the world that the body politic of Bharata suffered from a chronic illness. The Ghori invasions followed the proclamation. For the first time, foreign enemies secured permanent lodgement in the heart of the country. It is, however, remarkable that though successive waves of racial eruptions from Central Asia broke on the shores of Bharata and submerged parts of it, and the last wave developed into an inundation lasting for about two centuries, Rajputana emerged from all this welter of history very nearly whole.
For about three centuries and a half beginning
with the end of the twelfth and ending with the beginning of the sixteenth century, Rajputana (Upper India) remained engaged in a death-struggle with its neighbours, the Afghans, who though enemies politically were ethnically allied to the Rajputs, for, not only was the blood that ran in their bodies the same as that of the Rajputs, but Afghanistan itself had only recently ceased to be a part of Bharata. The founding of Ghazni by MahaRaval Gajsingh, an ancestor of the Maharaval of Jaisalmer, and the extending of the dominion of King Sobhagsen and others over the whole of Afghanistan and Baluchistan was then a matter of recent history
Though during this period of three centuries, the
Afghans retained possession of Delhi and a part of the Punjab Plains, and now and then attacked the neighbouring princes and provinces, and whenever a powerful and ambitious ruler came to the throne, exercised suzerain power over some of them, yet the whole of Rajputana was independent and many Rajput kings in the Hill states and the United Provinces enjoyed sovereign power.
The Afghan kings of Delhi were often reduced to such straits by the Rajputs that except a semblance nothing of real sovereignty remained with them. The extent of their power and the precarious nature of their rule is fully exposed by what Zia-uddin Barni in his celebrated Tarikhi Firoz Shahi says of the time when Grhayasuddin Balban came to the throne: "The Western gates of the city of Delhi were shut at afternoon prayer (5 p.m.) and no one dared to go out of the city in that direction after that hour whether he travelled as a pilgrim or with the display of a Sovereign !"
These three centuries of Afghan rule was that
of adventurers and military chiefs of tribes and factions over Delhi and the punjab plains interspersed with raids into neighbouring and distant parts of India, as the internal dissensions in the Hindu States and their mutual recriminations or jealousies gave opportunities to the Sultans to secure loot or vaunt military power. There was no settled or stable Government, one dynasty
following another in quick succession, assassination and murder opening the way to the throne. The Sultans had no idea of statesmanship or statecraft. The social life of the people organized in complete independence of political conditions which were liable to violent fluctuations, flowed undisturbed and unconcerned, taking little heed of the change of rulers, violent and bloody palace revolutions and occasional raids.
While the current of this Afghan rule ebbed and
flowed, the inherent strength of the Rajputs asserted itself and not only was the territorial
strength of the Sultanate eventually reduced to narrow limits but its military power was completely crushed. Led by Hindu SurRatna Maharana Kumbha, the Rajputs reconquered Malwa, took Ajmer, defeated the Sultan of Gujrat and
reduced the rule of the Sultan of Delhi to a small
circumscribed area. The political horizon of India
showed unmistakable signs that the time was not distant when the Hindus would recover lost supremacy and drive out the foreigners. All that was wanted was the appearance of a man of commanding personality, the emergence of a leader who could gather together the scattered units of power and lead them against the common enemy. Such a leader appeared in the person of Maharana Sangram Singh Sisodiya , known in history as Hindupat Rana
Sanga of Mewar. Mr. Erskine in his Memoirs of Babur says : " The Empire of Delhi was in confusion. It
had become the prey to the strongest, and the former success, and the mighty power of the Rana might seem to justify at once his hopes of seating himself on the vacant throne of the Afghan Lodis,and his more reasonable and glorious ambition of expelling the Afghans and Toorky invaders from India and restoring her own Hindu race of Rajput kings and her native institutions."
Such promising prospect, however, was darkened
by those fatal defects in Hindu character which had
developed with the rise of certain social and religious beliefs and practices. The cup of success so near to
the lips was dashed to the ground. While the inherent vitality of the Hindu race was asserting itself, the
fissiparous tendencies of Hindu society aided by the
anti-national influences of feudalism were having their full play. The single unifying influence of the personality of the heroic Maharana whose valorous exploits, chivalrous character and political foresight had won him the willing allegiance of the rulers of Rajputana was eventually neutralized by the centrifugal forces and the disruptive tendencies of Hindu society at whose heart gnawed the disintegrating caste-system with sharpened teeth. The ravaging effect on the Hindu nation
of the narrow and exclusive anti-national tendencies
of the teachings of the Vaishnava Acharyas and others separating brother from brother, caste from caste began to loom large in the heavens as evil portents, when, on the ruins of Afghan rule, a capable adventurer from the distant highlands of Samarkand appeared on the scene and made a bid for political ascendancy in India, That a Turk driven from his home in Turkistari and setting up rule in Kabul should cross over to India with twelve thousand men all told, to conquer the country inhabited by thirty crores of people immeasurable superior to the invaders in Arts and civilzation, with great traditions of military glory behind them, and actually succeed in founding a kingdom is a unique phenomenon of the highest significance in the history of the world. The phenomenon is so astounding that the
world a thousand years hence might well be excused if it declined to accept it as a historical fact.
With the Setback of the Rajput Confederacy under
the valiant Maharana Sanga at Khanwa in 1526 A.D., the hopes of Hindu independence disappeared for the time being. The Mughal (Turk+Mongol) empire founded by Jalaludin Mohamamad, the grandson of Bubar, remained intact for two centuries. For the first time a Muslim State in the real sense of the term came into existence in Hindustan. The fame of this empire was wafted to distant lands. Ambassadors from England and Persia came to Hindustan in acknowledgment of its greatness. But the founding, the rearing up and the maintenance of this empire was mainly due to the co-operation and the active help of the Hindus. Colonel Tod, the incomparable historian of Rajputana, says : "The Mughals were indebted for half their conquests to the Lakh Tulwar Rathoran" (hundred thousand swords of the Rathore
Rajputs) and again, "the most brilliant conquests
of these monarchy (Akbar, Jehangir and Aurangzeb) were by their Rajput allies, who encountered at command the Afghans amidst the snows of the
Caucasus or made the furthest Chersonese tributary
to the empire. " And as soon as this Rajput aid was withdrawn, the empire crumbled to pieces like a house of cards.
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