KARACHI: Historian Manan Ahmed has said people think that India is the English translation of Hindustan, but it is not. India is its own concept.

Mr Ahmed said this while speaking at an event on ‘The Loss of Hindustan’ based on his book of the same title at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) on Monday evening.

IBA Executive Director Akbar Zaidi introduced the speaker to the audience.

Mr Ahmed, historian at Columbia University, began his lecture by saying that he wanted to speak about the history of the idea of Hindustan. Some people say it’s a civilisation, some associate it with music, some with dance or the Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb. The Loss of Hindustan is the history of an idea, a concept. Writing the history of any creative construction is predicated on the type of sources one can assemble, but it becomes really difficult if our contemporary nationalisms are based on the idea of forgetting.

He underlined three things for his presentation: the history of space, rendition and amassment, and decolonising history. “My basic argument is that what we’ve placed in the 18th century Europe claiming it’s after that history writing began in the rest of the world… This is a Eurocentric idea.”

The problem with the philosophy of history is, he mentioned, that it is tied to nation-state. “In order to solve it, I isolated a particular historian, Muhammad Qasim Firishta, who was writing in the early part of the 17th century. I asked, how did Firishta think about the philosophy of history? How did he think things happened? Who did he think were his people? Who did he think about space? By trying to read someone from the early 17th century I was hoping to figure out the ways in which history writing can be given a genealogy that is not determined solely by Europe.”

Historian Manan Ahmed shares his thoughts on The Loss of Hindustan at IBA

Mr Ahmed said his book ends with the loss of Hindustan, which basically is the period between 1904 and 1908 (the former is to do with Iqbal’s Tarana-i-Hindi and the latter with V D Savarkar’s tarana that gives the definition of Hindutva).

“It is also the concomitant creation of India. We think that India is the English translation of Hindustan. It is not. India is its own concept. The most articulated concept that I’ve been able to trace for India is from 1786 by philologist William Jones who had mentioned Nagri (letters), Hindu (religion) and India… This is the colonial construction of India… This is how Hindustan’s concept was erased by the British and then by nationalism,” he said.

Coming back to the 17th century, he said Firishta was in the Deccan and was part of the Adil Shahi polity. Adil Shah II commissioned him to write history of Hindustan, a time when the people from their land were described as ‘savages’ by the British. He was asked to write something that’s new. Adil Shah II had just created a city called Navraspur, so newness was important.

“Firishta had some models which were very important. Either you write a history of a person; or history of a family; or the genealogy of rulers. Firishta makes a specific argument. What he says is that I’m going to write the history of a space, and that space he defines as Hindustan… This is why Tarikh-i-Firishta is one of the most important documents that comes out of the subcontinent,” he added.

Mr Ahmed said Firishta was not just writing a history of space, he was writing social history. “Basically that means he’s writing about people, ordinary people, elite people, people in trouble, people who are operating within or outside the spheres of law… He was also aware that kingship or sovereignty did not just belong to a ruler.”

“Expanding Hazrat Amir Khusrau’s thoughts Firishta believed the people of Hindustan have a relationship with language, food, smells, odours, neighbourliness, brotherly and sisterliness… We can have seven different languages and still communicate with each other using a common language, Hindvi. For Firishta, Sanskrit, Persian, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu would all be everyday use languages,” he said.

The scholar said subsequently every single history that was written would have a section on the qualities of Hindustan. By making a history of space, Firishta gave a type of vocabulary that’s going to be widely consulted. “This is where Europe comes in. Jean Baptiste Gentil commissions local artists to create illuminations of Firishta’s tarikh. At the same time, a British soldier Lt-Col Alexander Dow also commissions a translation, a rendition of Firishta.”

Mr Ahmed then highlighted a text, two dissertations, claiming it wasn’t just a movement of Firishta’s translation from Farsi into English, but a soldier’s cry creating a version of Tarikh-i-Firishta through which two central arguments of colonial rule were going to be operated. One, define Hinduism. Two, define oriental despotism. The first was the people, and the second were the rulers, Muslim rulers. It was going to be the official policy of the colonial empire for the next 200 years. “Firishta was also going to give them a list of what to loot.”

In that context, he pointed out the name of H M Eliot who sought manuscripts. Eliot made a list of texts, the first of which was Tarikh-i-Firishta. Since Firishta had cited other historians, they could take all of the texts he was citing and collect them.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2023