India that
came to be
India had
captured the imagination of the world, especially the West, since Roman times,
when the senators like Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD, cried
that all their gold is flowing in the direction of India to pay for the spices,
especially pepper from the Kerala coast that they were importing from this
country. But India as a country as we know today was not there that time. It
was the Chera dynasty, one of the three small kingdoms of southern India, that
they interacted with. The 14th century, traveler from Venice, Italy,
Marco Polo, on his way back from China of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis
Khan, the then Mongolian ruler of China, visited India – the Coromandel coast,
today’s Tamil Nadu and also the Kerala coast, during the reign of Pandya kings,
flushed with pearls, spices and international trade. Even then there was no
single country named India. There were many rulers each carving out his own
kingdoms, with mutual fighting for supremacy between them happening almost all
the time.
Spurred by
his travel accounts describing the wealth that was over-flowing in these parts,
especially the Indian spices and Chinese silk, a favorite with the rich in the
yester year Rome and the European countries, Europeans searched for a sea route
to come to India to trade with her in the 15th century, especially
as the land route got costly, with the Ottoman Turks capturing Constantinople
in 1456 AD and enjoying a near monopoly over spices. They stumbled over America
and called them the Indians, when Christopher Columbus sailing from Spain,
landed in Bahamas in 1492. In 1498 Columbus in his third voyage, landed near
today’s Venezuela, and they called the Americas or the South American people as
Indians. Only in 1507, Amerigo Vespucci discovered that America was a new
continent and not Asia, much less India that they were seeking. Still the name
Indians stuck, now they are called Amerindians. It was Vasco de Gama, a
Portuguese explorer, who first discovered a sea route to India and arrived at
Calicut, Now Kozhikode in Kerala in 1498. Thus started the scramble for the real
India.
When the East
India company was formed in London on the eve of 1601 AD, their sights were
still set on trade. But the affairs which they saw in India gave them
territorial ambitions. As long as the Mughal Empire was strong, as a central
authority in India, all of these traders, Portuguese, Dutch, English and
French, behaved, putting on their best behavior. Once the Mughal empire started
to crumble, the traders turned territorial conquerors. India was ruled by
multifarious kings and princes and nawabs, who were constantly fighting with
each other, even inviting the French or the English to fight each other. Still
India was very much a place ruled by many, under the umbrella of one mighty
power, the Mughal Empire. The infightings culminated in Britain capturing power
in India, first in Calcutta and then slowly but surely, they consolidated their
power in the other coastal areas like Madras, now Chennai, and Bombay, now
Mumbai.
India was
never a country as we see it today, not even during British Raj. Only twice
before any semblance of a single rule with an Emperor ruling the entire India
prevailed. Once, under the Emperor Ashoka, a Mauryan King, (268-232 BC), who
had conquered most of northern India, extending up to Kabul and Afghanistan.
His rule extended even to the south, but the tip of Indian peninsula of Chera,
Chola, Pandya kingdoms were not included. After Ashoka the empire fell into
pieces. Ashoka, a Hindu, converted to become a Buddhist, spent his life
propagating Buddhism throughout his kingdom and outside to Sri Lanka, Tibet and
beyond.
The second
King who almost brought the entire India under his control was Aurangzeb
(1658-1707), the last powerful Emperor of Mughal dynasty. Though at his time
there were rulers of Marathas, Sikhs and Rajput, he held them at bay by his
might and power. But he also sowed seeds of discard among the local rulers of
India, by strictly imposing Islamic law. His boundaries extended up to the
south, but he also couldn’t control the very tip of Southern India, which was
under the rulers Maharaja of Travancore, and Nayakas of Mysore. But the empire
started to collapse immediately after his death, and the Marathas, Sikhs,
Persians, Afghans, and Europeans fought with each other for the spoils of the
kingdom.
Now let’s
skip the intervening years and centuries and come to the 1947 when India won
its freedom from the British rule. British rule took a foothold in India with
their success in the Battle of Plassey in 1747. They left after 200 years of
rule in 1947, during which time, they had sucked India dry of her financial and
trade hegemony. Her wealth was looted to build London and the British Empire,
her people enslaved, bereft of their pride in their culture and trade. From
being the land where gold that flowed to buy her products, she became a Third
world country, impoverished in her resources and finances. More adverse than
that, the country was partitioned into two, Pakistan and India, both looking
like moth-eaten. Well, that was some 79 years ago. Now we are looking up again,
breaking the cycle of poverty, superstition and illiteracy. But we are jumping
ahead. My main point is this moth-eaten country left by the Britishers became
today’s India, encompassing the entire sub-continent that goes by the name
India, by the tireless efforts some committed leaders of the then India.
When the
British left India in 1947, India was not a single political entity, though
geographically she had always been one. There was British India, directly
annexed and ruled by the British from Delhi. This was divided into many
provinces, the prominent ones being Bombay, Bengal, Madras, Sind, etc.,
covering roughly half of the subcontinent. Then we had the Princely India,
ruled indirectly by the British through the hereditary princes, which was
governed by various treaties, annexation agreements and so on. There were some 600
such princely states, small and big, with the rulers provided with security and
some privileges in return for acknowledging the supreme or paramountcy of the
British. While transferring the power, the British made it clear that the
paramountcy privileges and protections ended and giving the princes the option
to join either Pakistan or India or to go it alone. In India the power was
transferred to the Indian National Congress with Jawahar Lal Nehru as the
chosen leader, and in Pakistan the baton was passed onto Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
the leader of the Muslim League Party.
This created
problems. There were 565 princely states in the undivided India, and
integrating these into the newly independent country was a great problem. If
left to themselves as independent entities, it would be much more moth-eaten,
with many such independent states within the Indian State. National security,
foreign relationships, etc., would become an ever-present headache. Leaders
like Nehru were against monarchies operating within democratic India. There was
a talk among the rulers of the princely states of even forming a ‘Princestan,’
comprising all the princely states! The princely states occupied 45% of the
undivided India and had 24 % of the total population of the pre-partition
India.
A States
Department was quickly formed to deal with the problem, under the leadership of
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the then Deputy Prime Minister and V.P. Menon, as the
Secretary of the department, to integrate the princely states and create a
unified India. They had to convince the rulers of the princely states to join
the union of India. And they had less than two months to accomplish this task, and
make them sign the Instrument of Accession to Government of India, before the
date fixed for independence, 15th August 1947. It was a race against
time. But they did a marvelous work and made the country India to what it is
today, geographically and politically, an integrated country, which for the
first time in her long history, covered the whole area of the sub-continent (except
Pakistan, which again spilt into Pakistan and Bangladesh).
“565: The
dramatic story of unifying India,” has been ably narrated by Mallika Ravikumar in
his book of 2024. It makes an interesting read. He picks out the most difficult
and bigger princely states, Travancore, Bhopal, Gwalior, Indore, Bikaner, Jodhpur,
Rampur, Baroda, Navanagar, Patiala, Tripura, Junagadh, Jammu and Kashmir and
Hyderabad and explains how these were integrated with India. Most of us are
more familiar with the integration of Junagadh, Jammu and Kashmir and Hyderabad
and the problems associated with their integration. In Hyderabad there was
police action; so also in Junagadh; Jammu and Kashmir problem unfortunately was
referred to the United Nations, at the prompting of Mountbatten, the First
Governor-General of Independent India and the problem is still simmering. I
will not go into the details of any of these, for neither time not space will
permit that, but to remind ourselves that the India that is today would not
have been possible, but for the untiring efforts of Sardar Patel, who was firm
with not only with the princes, but also with the Prime Minister Nehru and the
Governor-General Mountbatten, when they wavered. He was ably assisted by V.P.
Menon, a quiet bureaucrat, functioning as the Secretary of the States
Department. Sardar Patel, the Iron-man of India, with lot of foresight,
integrated peacefully the Tawang area of Tibet into Indian territory, as a
district of Arunachal Pradesh State. His statue stands as a testimony to this
even today in that place.
Now that we
have got the country back and in an integrated form, what are we to do as we
face the 77th year of Republic Day on 26th January, 2026?
As Indians we are not only proud of India’s achievements, but also, we need to
pray that she carries everyone with her in her development and advancement inside
the country and on the international stage. It needs to be an inclusive country
with a secular outlook, where everyone, with no distinction of caste, creed or
sex can be involved in her advancement and feel proud to be an Indian.
Bible teaches
us to pray for our country and our leaders. Apostle Paul writes in 1 Timothy
2:1-2, “I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and
giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and all who are in authority,
that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.” We
may even pray for those who spitefully treat us, for Lord Jesus Christ has said
in Matthew 5:44, 48, “I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse
you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you
and persecute you, … Therefore, you shall be perfect just as your Father in
heaven is perfect.” Let us abide by these exhortations and wish our country
well. May God bless our country and its people.
