Professor Burton Stein, Vijayanagara Empire and I: An Epistolary Journey

 

I worked for my Ph D in History with Professor Burton Stein in the Department of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa. I graduated in 1987 and returned to India where I taught in Pondicherry University as a Professor of History and retired as Dean, School of Social Sciences and International Studies and am now settled In Pondicherry,a toen I have grown to love. A few day back there was a programme on FaceBook in which a noted Delhi based historian gave a talk on "Working with Burton Stein". Since I am the only Historian in India who has had the privilege of working with his doyen of Medieval History, I thought that I could share my thoughts and experiences with my larger world of fellow Historians through this Blog. It has been more than 38 years since I received these letters and I am making them available to the wider world as I think, there will be greater interest in the sort of work that Burton Stein pioneered once the "Post Colonial" conceits are quietly set aside. Stein himself was very skepetical of the intervention of Edward Said who stareted this movement with his Orientalism. 

The work I did with Professor Burton Stein was entitled, Temples, Kings and Warriors: The Role of Warrior Chieftains in the Political Structure of Late Medieval Tamil Country, AD 1300-1565. From citations to this work, I learn that several Historians have contacted Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii, Manoa, and have consulted this dissertation. The starting point of my work was the last chapter of Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India in which Vijayanagara Empire was discussed. I felt that the Nayaka level of leadership that emerged with the Vijayanagara Expansion would enable us to get a good picture of the structure of Political Power at the intermediate level in the late medieval period. The old structured relations around land and its resources broke down under the impact of the decline of the Chola State and the expansion of the Turkish Sultanates into the region during the reign of Alauddin Khilji and later Muhhamad Bin Tughlaq. Through the difficult time when I was writing the Dissertation before the advent of internet and fast communication Professor Stein and I kept in touch through Correspondence and I have nearly 50 letters from him. I have uploaded a few so that in future there documents are available.

Professor Burton Stein taught me the value of meticulous documentation. He was a great believer in depth and on more than one ocassion admonished me that good history is done by reconstruction of the Past based on the basis of the maximum study of available records. For this reason I am tempted to say that the subjective post colonial deconstructist versions that are fashionable today would not have had his approval. In fact, a Guru of Post Colonialism whose work is now de riguer for contemporary purposes was not popular with Professor Stein, though after the unfortunate demise of Professor Stein in 1996, this Guru has acquired cult like status and with it a controversial image. In Thomas Munro: Man and Vision of Empire Stein showed that he was right in seeking the roots of the Munro System in the medieval past. I followed up this work by undertaking a study of Mark Wilks as a Historian of Vijayanagara. I worked on the basis of the official records of the East India Company.

Burton Stein insisted that History should be based on what he called Primary Documentation and all available records must be studies for the purpose of eliciting information of the past. He practically made London his second home even while he was teaching at the University of Hawaii and each Summer Dorothy and he would fly off to London and work in the India Office Library. I have  been interested in studying the papers of Mark Wilks and Colin McKenzie and hope that after the end of this season of COVID 19 will be able to visit the British Library. 

Thorough exploration of existing Documentation and Hisrtoriography were the main features of Burton Stein's work. In fact the first thing he made me do, when I joined him for the PhD was to spend a full semester reading books on Vijayanagara Empire. Stein had set aside Thursdays from 2:30 to 5:00 exclusively for me and we would meet in his Office with the glass windows overlooking the Japanese Bamboo Garden in Sakamaki Hall, Dole Street snd he insisted that I come prepared with a full 10 page critique. As I have always said and I say again, I learnt History from a Great Master and am proud of it.

To the best of my recollection he did not miss a single Thursday Class and from him I learnt to take Class timings seriously. After he left Hawaii and retired to London, Professor Stein continued to supervise my work and was able to graduate in 1987.

When I look back across the life time that has lapsed since I left Honolulu and the University of Hawaii, Manoa, the entire field of Medieval History has undergone a sea change. Scholars like the Late Noboru Karashima and James Heitzman continued to work on the lines suggested by Stein and widened the arena of investigation. The debate between Sanjay Subramanium and Noboru Karashima on the relative merits of Inscriptions written or rather engraved on hard surfaces like Stone and Copper and more ephemeral surfaces like paper was an exiting debate. Textures in Time could not have come about without the work of Burton Stein laying the foundation for the use of the McKenzie Collection.

Vijayanagara Historiography has not fared too poorly over the years. For some inexplicable reason Medieval History is dominated by the Mughals and their contempararies like Vijayanagara and other Southern polities have not got the same attention. One reason of ourse is the crass embrace of linguistic identity politics in post Independence India. Vijayanagara itself claimed to be Lord of Karnata a geographical term they used to denaote the entire imperium they commanded. However the creation of linguistic states has distorted the entire approach to Vijayanagara Historiography as Andhra Pradesh is seen as the heartland of the Empire. True Telugu was the chosen vehicle of expression of Krishandeva Raya but that did not make the Empire a "Telugu" one.  Andhra Pradesh has taken a lead in publishing the Telugu kaifyats collected by MCkenzie and his team. Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology has published 4 volumes culled from the Mackenzie vamshavalis or genealogies preserved in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library. This spate of interest in the Mckenzie Collection is due to the work of Professor Stein.

After my return to India I kept in touch with Professor Stein and or last meeting was when he came to Tanjavur to attend the World Tamil Conference in 1995. And in just over a year from then he passed on. I remember Professor Burton Stein with affection and gratitude. He made me what I am today and will ever remain in his debt.

RAYA: Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara A Review

Srinivasa Reddy, a scholar of South Asian Literature trained in USA has tried his hand at writing history after a fairly successful run as a trasnslator. His earlier workGiver of Worn Garlands was an excellent translation of the putative work attributed to the Tuluva ruler Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara. The present work presents itself as a historically informed biography of the ruler but in reality it is a readable but badly researched work mixing legend, popular tradition and even cinematic renditions to create a pastice of historical narrative. Of course he has come with the proper credentials displayed prominently on the dusk jacket. It is certainly "engaging" but is it "exemplary" is a differnt question altogether.

Vijayangara history is complex in that it self consciously procalimed a template of Statecraft that was predicated upon the negation of the disruptions wrought by the onset or invasions of the turushka. In fact the trope of destroying the turushka appears even in the inscriptions of Krishnadeva Raya and to ignore the underlying political ideology animating Vijayanagara statecraft is merely a surrender to the kind of identity politics India has seen in the years follwing Independence. Turushka meant Turk and did not imply a religious identity at all and to shy away from this issue on the grounds that it may be offensive to present day sensibilities of political correctness is not merely being anachronistic by historically inaccurate.When Vijayanagara began its slow but steady march toward Empire it projected its raison d'tre as the Restoration of Worship in temples destroyed by the turushka. The raids of Kafur and the Tughlaqs had resulted in a virtual collapse of the moral order. The language of Apoclypse is deployed in an early Copper Plate Inscription: "When the sun. Prataparudra set, the world was enveloped in the turushka darkness".

Srinivasa Reddy begins his narrative biography of Krishnadevaraya with the famous Hampe Inscription which was trasnlated by Eugene Hultzsch in Epigraphia Indica Vol I. Generally recognised as a danasasana, issued on the occasion of his coronation the Inscription states in its 11th verse that Krishnadeva Raya connquered the Chera, Chola, the proud Pandyas, the brave Turushka, the Gajapathi king and others. This claim of conquest of the Gajapathi or for that matter even victory over the Turushka is merely rhetorical, a statement of intent rather than of accomplishemt an Krishdevaraya took control over the Empire upon the death of his half brother, Vira Narashimha in 1509 and there is no evidence that he had participated in any major campaign with his fater Narasa Nayaka. Again there is no hstorical evidence to suggest that Gandikota, Vinnukonda and Nagarajakonda were suggested as likely targets of Vijayanagar acquisition by Narasa Nayaka. Srinivas Reddy cannot resist the temptation of including an intersting myth, story fable even cinema  dialogues. Thus he accepts the story of Vidyaranya ad his association with Harihara and Bukka even though there is compelling evidence that this myth came to the fore only in the decades after 1565 as shown by Hermann Kulke. A historian will not allow an intersting story to structure his narrative.

The most impressive part of the book are the chapters dealing with the conflict with the Gajapathi rulers of Orissa. Reddy keeps harping on the "low caste" status of Krishnadevaraya. He calls him "dasi putra". There is absolutely no historical evidence to show that caste perceptions in any way influeced the conflict. Gajapathi, Narapathi and Ashwapathi remained the trypych around which the polity of the medieval South Indian empire revolved. And the Gajpathi king himself came fom a dynasty of usurpers and so would not have thow such caste laden invective against Krishnadevaraya. It appears tht identity politics of today and caste laden social sciences inflused with identity politics makes such outlandish interpretations not only possible but academically rspectable. The fact is that such labels were unknown in the Vijayanagara period.

Krishnadevara raya presided over an Empire that was linguistically diverse, complex in terms of religious and sectarian composition and the social structure of the Vijayanagara polity was certainly stratified. However caste was still not the deciding factor as the very diversity of the Great Captains, the amaranayankara-s. demonstrates. Only one Historian has attempted a prosopographical study of Nayakas. Krishnadevaraya bore the biruda, Hindu raya Sutrranna or Sultan of HinduKings a title which underscores the tremendous influence of the Islamic political formations of the Deccan.

The book under review is certainly interesting. But its claim to be History can be contested.
 

The History Men: Jadunath Sarkar Sardesai, Raghubir Sinh and the Quest for India's Past by T C A Raghavan

Dr T C A Raghavan, a noted diplomat, historian and public intelelctual has written an outstanding book which covers the territory upon which Dipesh Chakravarthy has grazed in his Calling of History. Charkavarthy was concerned only with the writings of Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Ragavan has traversed a much larger chunk of Historiography. He has situated his examination of the three historians whose work he has analysed in great depth, at the intersection of their individual lives, their collaboration in the pursuit of historical documents and the deep personal bonds of friendship that bound them. Their quest for India's past took them to remote villages, towns and cities all over North India and Mahrashtra and thye uncovered significant troves of historical material which were carefully edited and published. All three of the scholars were pioneers in that they were historians who had to locate, collate and edit the documents on which their histories were based. And for the Maharatha Period and the Post Mughal Era this meant a mastery over a number of scripts and languages: Mahrathi, Persian, Arabic, French, Dutch and Portuguese. The three historians collaborated with each other as Dr Raghavan has shown in the most intensnse and academically fruitful manner. It is interesting to learn that Sir Jadunath Sarkar's reconstruction of the Battle of Panipat, 1761 was based on a contemporary record. The Hafta Anjuman a post Mughal history was located and used by Sarkar in his Fall of the Mughal Empire.

The History Men is an important work of historiography as it deals with the intellectual climate in which Indians began to explore their past. This quest was particularly difficult as it coincided with two very huge popular movements: the Freedom Movement and the Partition Movement, both at times collaborating and at times confronting each other. Politically the times were charged with the high voltage current of identity politics, the Moslem and Hindu one aimed at carving a holemand for the Muslims and the other aimed at preserving the unity and integrity of India as a nation and Civilization. Sir Jadunath Sarkar himelf was a victim of the Partion Movement as his eledest son was killed in the riots. And as Raghavan points out he did not recover from this tragedy. The substantial work of Sir Jadunath revolved around Aurangazeb and his reign. His five volume History of Aurangazeb was based on the original letters and Court Documents which were located in Jaipur, Gwalior and other places. Sarkar used the court documents judicially and his account of the rise of the Maharathas as the most powerful challengers to the hegemony of the Mughals was essentially an analysis of Mahratha documents. The collaboration with G S Sardesai was important as Sarkar though conversant with Modi had his transcripts of the Mahrati documents checked by Sardesai.

In his Shivaji and His Times, Sarkar provided a balanced and nuanced account of Sivaji but the Poona Scholars associated with the Ithihasa Samshodaka Mandala like Rajwade were quite hostile to the work. Raghavan expalins the hostility as stemming from the intrusion of a Bengali in Mahrashtra and its history at a time when the cult around Shivaji was becoming the defining element in the identity of Maharashtrians. There is also the growing assertion of a caste identity during this time and Shivaji and his legacy were deeply contested. Rughubir Sinh, the scion of the Sitamau Princely State located in Malwa wrote his D Phil thesis on Malwa in Transition a work which was much appreciated by Sarkar. Later Raghubir Sinh became a memmber of the Lok Sabha and served two terms and established a Research Institute at Sitmau.

Raghavan has done a splendid job in ressurecting the memory and contribution of these early pioneers of Indian Historiography. One of the unfortunate developments of post Independence Era was the appropriation of Indian History by an ideologically committed group of historians, some would even say cabal of histry peddlers, who with the patronage of the Indian State drove these pioneers into obvlivion. Their pamphlet Communalism and the Writing of Indian History published by the Peoples' Publishing House became the manifesto for a kind of History thatn pitted Historians into hostile camps. Anyone disagreeing with the High Priets of the New Creed was  "Communal" :\"Reactionary" "Anti Modern" etc. The climate of free and dispassionate reconstruction of the past was vitiated by the personality clash betwee the pioneers like Sarkar, Sardesai, Majumdhar, Nilakanta Sastri, H C Ray chowdhury and others with Mohammad Habib and later his son and successor, Irfan Habib. That this clash has not ended is made amply clear in the recent public brawl in which Irfan Habib prevented the Governor of Kerala from continuing with his Speech. An ugly episode which would have been unthinkable in the civilzed days of Sarkar and friends