1

CENTRE FOR HISTORICAL STUDIES,

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, JNU

Paper - State in Medieval India II (M31407)

Submitting to - Prof. Ranjeeta Dutta

Submitted by - Ravish Raj (MA 1st Year)

How do historical memories affect the understanding of political ideologies and

ideas of the state in medieval India?

Memory has been described as the enabling capacity of human existence1, and
hence, it forms not only an essential component of all our intellectual quests but
also shapes our present sociopolitical behaviour. As all remembrances are post-
date constructions, memory reflects the choice patterns in what is being
remembered and the motives in how it is being remembered. When it comes to
social memory, narratives are chosen according to their ideological utility and
crafted according to the requirements of the ideology. Memories can also extend
over to the subconscious and impact even those aspects of our behaviour which we
consider natural. Maurice Halbwachs'2 theory of memory states that memories are
constructed (i) on a social foundation (ii) to provide solid reference points for a
society's understanding of its cultural past, and (iii) to colonize the past by
obligating it to promote ideas of the present.

Historical memory is a somewhat contested term. Halbwachs3 opines that it is an

‘unfortunate expression’ as it links opposite terms. For him, history begins with the
end of social memory, since as long as a group can preserve the remembrance
through tradition and commemoration, it does not need to compile a written
compendium. However, Philippe Ariès4 disputes Halbwachs' argument by
contending that history and memory are mutually inclusive. According to him,

1
Cubitt, Geoffrey. History and memory. MUP(2013). P1
2
Hutton, Patrick H. "Collective memory and collective mentalities: the Halbwachs-Ariès connection."
Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques (1988). Pp. 311-322.
3
Halbwachs, Maurice, The collective memory, New York, Harper & Row Colophon Books, 1980. P. 78
4
Hutton, Patrick H. 1988.
 2

memory grants access to obliviated domains of the past by providing alternatives

to the victor's version of history. Historians like Pierre Nora and Wachtel5 argue
that history itself becomes the memory sanctioned by the socially prepollent
culture. Hobsbawm6 states that the collective memory of the past is compiled and
constituted by historians. Romila Thapar7 has used the term 'historical tradition' for
a historically conscious body of literature that fails to qualify as the discipline of
history. Following the abovementioned arguments, it is safe to say that historical
memories are consciously created to reconstitute the past according to the needs of
the present within the context of community.

Political ideology refers to an assortment of ideas, values, beliefs and opinions, that
provide strategies for designing public policy and manipulating public psyche in an
attempt to rework or sustain the sociopolitical structure.8 Political ideologies are
fundamental to the hegemonic functioning of the state as it represents the apex
body in systemised machinery of extraction. These ideologies are expressed
through rhetorical devices and theories of kingship employed in the literary works
that serve as the manufacturing camps of historical memories. This essay aims at
exploring how historical memories affect the understanding of political ideologies
and ideas of the state in medieval India by focusing on four seminal sites of
memory.

Prithviraj Chauhan and the Notion of Hindu Resistance

Cynthia Talbot9 traces the monolithic iconisation of Prithviraj Chauhan in the

memory of the subcontinent over 800 years. Prithviraj has been used more than he
has been studied. The scholarship has been limited to the evaluation of Prithviraj
Raso, the approach confined to affirmation or rejection of the idea of communal
conflict in medieval India. This presentist bias has hindered the emergence of
essential and more profound questions, which could be answered through a

5
Ibid.
6
Cubitt, Geoffrey. 2013.
7
Thapar, Romila. The Past Before Us. Harvard University Press, 2013.
8
Freeden, M. "Ideology: Political Aspects". International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral
Sciences. 2001, Pp. 7174-7.
9
Talbot, Cynthia. The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Cauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000.
Cambridge University Press, 2016.
 3

detailed analysis of various folk memories of him that have been eclipsed by the
Raso.

Comparing the accounts of the attempt at a diplomatic negotiation in Prithviraj

Vijaya and Taj al Ma'asir, Talbot brings out how political relations were
maintained. Hence, the idea of state was not limited to incessant warfare, but there
were sincere efforts to resolve tension through diplomacy. Even though
contemporary epigraphical and literary records are full of derogatory remarks on
Muslim foes, Prithviraj Raso, a late sixteenth-century text, does not depict
Muslims in a negative light and emphasises the rivalry with Jaichand. Even when it
comes to Prithviraj himself, not all his battles are remembered equally well. We
also lack any concrete idea of Prithviraj as a king, because aspects of kingship,
other than military, with regard to him have not been memorialised. In projecting
Prithviraj as the quintessence of Hindu warriorhood, one can see how a specific
memory is given precedence in order to serve certain political goals. In contrary to
the view that shows Prithviraj as a brave hero, Jaina tradition retells his story to
demonstrate how kings should not act. Prithviraj Prabandh depicts him as an
unwise and incompetent king.

Prithviraj Raso also engages in the valorization of other warriors of Delhi-

Haryana-Rajasthan belt and their battles against other states. In doing so, it
develops a sense of regional identity based on Rajput martial ethos by constructing
a shared past. Raso also depicts hypergamous marriages as the tool for
sociopolitical mobility and networking. Women in Prithviraj Raso are presented
paradoxically: on the one hand they have an essential role in exalting the stature of
Prithviraj, on the other their presence is seen as threatening to the masculinity of
the king.

In a period characterised by the hierarchies of dynasty, stature and rank, Raso

creates a universe of heroes and apotheosises Prithviraj as an ancient Kshatriya
warrior. It becomes a source of legitimacy for multiple lineages. The story at this
point moves out of local settings of preceding compositions to suit the needs of
Mughal sociopolitical order, and its monumentality is intensified to a scale where it
becomes a vernacular Mahabharata.
 4

Alauddin Khilji and the Idea of Moral Defeat

Ramya Sreenivasan10 examines the themes of conquest, gender and community in

four poems pertaining to Alauddin Khilji that were composed in Rajput court
circles. The remembrance of Alauddin's conquest consolidates (i) the narrative of
subjugation (ii) the claim to descent from the subjugated lineages (iii) the
restructuring of gender politics, and (iv) the idea of heterogeneity in social origin
and subsequent politics of Rajput elites.

Nayachandra Suri's Hammiramahakavyam traces the genealogy of Chauhan

lineage from sun. The trope of divine ancestry is further aggrandised by sanctifying
the city of Ajmer. The poem, sequestered by the king's merry engagement and
sermons inspired by nitishastra, narrates the story of conflict between two
ambitious kings: the Chauhan King Hammira and the Yavana king Allavadina. The
conflict is concluded with the defeat of Hammira, not because of his inability,
oversight or miscalculations, but because of the treachery of his associates. The
women perform jauhar as the men sacrifice themselves on the battlefield. The end
is tragic. However, the side that loses still wins because of its moral superiority.
The side that wins is still at a loss, because of its unscrupulous means of conquest;
and because at the end of their immoral pursuit, there is nothing left to conquer.
This irony stupendously converts a narrative of defeat into a legitimising text.

Padmanabha's Kanhadade Prabandh talks about Allauddin's conquest of Gujarat in

a similar fashion. Madhav, the minister of the king Sarangde, betrays the king by
revealing the military secrets of his king to Sultan Alauddin. The Chauhan ruler of
Jalahur, Kanhadade, defeats Alauddin on his way back to Delhi after sacking
Gujarat. Alauddin's retaliation is fierce, and he might have laid waste to the capital
in the narratives of his court historians; however, Padmanabha, at this point, inserts
a dramatic plot twist. Piroja, the daughter of Alauddin, utters a prophecy that
Kanhadade is the tenth incarnation of Vishnu, and thus, is inviolable. She also
expresses the desire to marry Kanhadade's son Viramde. Peace talks between the
two kings do not work, and the conflict ends in the capture of Jalahur fort and
subsequent sacrifices of Kanhadade and Viramde. Piroja immolates herself in the
10
Sreenivasan, Ramya. "Alauddin Khalji Remembered: Conquest, Gender and Community in Medieval
Rajput Narratives." Studies in History 18.2 (2002) Pp. 275-296.
 5

cremation pyre of Viramde's head at the banks of Yamuna. This marks the moral
defeat of Alauddin as he loses his honour impersonated in his daughter in order to
occupy a fort.

Chitai-Varta is a less gory tale where conquest and defeat are determined by
contradictory cases of a woman's possession and her choices. Alauddin wins when
Chitai is abducted after a battle, and he loses when she chooses to call him father.
Saunrsi, her husband, defeats the curse of an ascetic to get his wife back. Alauddin,
the dreaded Sultan who went to the length of destroying a kingdom to acquire
Chitai, has to surrender her to Saunrsi, who is madly in love with his wife, as a
reward for musical performance.

In my view, the retelling of Padmavat, from Jayasi to Bhansali11, is an excellent

example of how historical narratives are refashioned to suit the needs of
contemporary politics. Jayasi's version ends with Devapal and Ratansen killing
each other, their women committing sati and jauhar, and Alauddin, ill-fated as he
always is, conquering Chittor but still evaded by victory.

One would note that the plots follow a similar path of symbolism. The political
ideology revolves around the notions of honour, expressed in illustrious lineages
and the control of women's mobility. The preservation of Rajput women from
Alauddin through self-immolation preserves the Rajput honour, despite the Sultan's
victory in the battlefield. This honour is central to the idea of the Rajput state.

Krishnadevaraya and the Relationship of Dependence

Rayavachakamu, or the tidings of the king, is composed as an anachronistic

diplomatic report touching upon numerous events from Krishnadevaraya's reign
addressed to Vishwanatha Nayaka of the late sixteenth century by his sthanapati
employed at Vijayanagara of eighty to ninety years ago. Initially, the text suffered
from the curse of modern scholarship, i.e., dismemberment into historical and
11
An analysis of deviations from the original narrative, which itself is written much later than the events
described, will be an interesting research. A plain glance at the trailer reveals the idea the movie wishes
to present: Chittor is a surreal painting, while Alauddin's camp is depicted as a dungeon. The sharp
distinction between good and evil has a hidden communal undertone that resonates with the
contemporary Indian politics.
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ahistorical segments. However, Phillip B Wagoner12 has translated the report into a
comprehensible reading, and through this work, he argues that Rayavachakamu
was an indirect record shaped by the sensibilities of the time in which it was
created. It worked as the principal ideological and ethnohistorical document of the
Nayaka period. Mythical incidents which were earlier discarded were examined in
a new light to grasp an understanding of the text's distinctive reimagination of the
past.

Vijayanagara's past is fabricated and exploited as the ideology of the Madurai

Nayaka state, which previously worked on the system of dependent kingship. By
selecting specific events, the author links the claim of Nayaka legitimacy not to the
contemporary, deteriorating Vijayanagara of Venkatpati, but a flourishing
Vijayanagara under Krishnadevaraya. The Aravidus do not possess the talismanic
city of Vijayanagara, which is the primary source of ritual authority of
Vijayanagara kings, and hence, are no more the legitimising authority.

After the establishment of Nayakas in Madurai in the 1560s, there is a change in

the expression of the subordinate intermediary relationship in donative
inscriptions. The rhetoric asserts centrifugal tendency by bargaining for more
recognition. From the 1580s, one notices a steep rise in defying the authority of
Vijayanagara. What Rayavachakamu does is that it historicizes the system of
dependent kingship, thus severing the obligation of the past with that of the
present. This argument is in sync with Halbwachs'13 assertion that whereas memory
is founded on the continuation of consciousness from past to present, history is
based on the rupture between those. In addition to this, Rayavachakamu eliminates
later Vijayanagara history by marking Krishnadevaraya as the last emperor of the
empire, a claim supported by prophecy. The text does not resort to making
genealogical links to Krishnadevaraya as the reporting is successful in sustaining
the relationship of dependence in a symbolic space.

The destruction of Vijayanagara compelled the author of Rayavachakamu to

respond to the cultural force of Islam. By demonising the Turks, the author was

12
Wagoner, Phillip B. Tidings of the king: A translation and ethnohistorical analysis of the
Rayavacakamu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.
13
Cubitt, Geoffrey. 2013.
 7

successful in putting his king at a higher pedestal. This strategy has been employed
multiple times in many narratives.

Kashmir and the Sensibility of Religion

Chitralekha Zutshi14 explores narratives, religious geographies, and imaginations

of Kashmir that shaped its contested pasts. She talks about Kashmiri narrative
public as the sphere within which the idea of Kashmir is articulated through
multiple traditions. The numerous narratives discussing this idea hatched various
ideologies as per the contexts in which those were employed. The historical
memories of Kashmir became an important tool of negotiation, through which its
relationship with other imperial entities was determined. These narratives,
designed by the Kashmiris, set their location within various overlapping
jurisdictions. The historical tradition wove together the past, present and future in a
single frame, and gave ample space for myth to interact with history.

Kashmir is portrayed as a divine landscape, similar to paradise. Zutshi presents a

compelling argument by emphasising the role of 'vernacular' Persian narratives that
used local myths discussed in Sanskrit works to assimilate Kashmir culturally with
the rest of the subcontinent. Kashmir was a polychromatic idea painted in Islamic
universalism, Sanskrit Cosmopolitanism and Kashmiri localism.15 Sufi shrines
served as production sites for vernacular Persian literature, and this led to the
parallel creation of Kashmir's spiritual and political past. The Sufis also took up the
task of the propagation of these narratives, which were thus fed into the public
through networks of patronage, germinating the seed of identity in society.

Late sixteenth-century Tazkiras and Tarikhs repositioned the local myths into a
universal Islamic view, and thus, paved the way for the naturalisation of Islam in
Kashmir. By documenting the Islamic past of Kashmir, a religio-political
sensibility was being given shape. The advent of Islam in Kashmir was integrated
with the recreation of Kashmir itself. A past was created when Sufi saints were
superior to the kings, when they refashioned the landscapes from demonic zones of

14
Zutshi, Chitralekha. Kashmir’s Contested Pasts: Narratives, Geographies, and the Historical
Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2014.
15
Ibid.
 8

pre-Islamic people to gardens populated by Islamic agriculturists. These narratives

gave the mystics the legitimising authority. Thus, these narratives, written in a
cosmopolitan language but serving vernacular functions, not only shaped the
Kashmiri landscape but also attached to it a specific religious sensibility.

Conclusion

Historical memories are the recreations of the past that have a socio-political
purpose in the present. These are expressed through narratives that are designed to
acquire a popular base. With time and need, these memories are revised. One of the
principal objectives of historical memories is to form a political ideology that
facilitates the state in its functioning. In the context of medieval India, the
understanding of which is still shaped by the presentist discourse over the
encounter between two diametric religions, historical memories do broaden our
comprehension of the state by showing that legitimacy did not necessarily flow
from religious authority.
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Bibliography

● Cubitt, Geoffrey. History and memory. MUP(2013).

● Freeden, M. "Ideology: Political Aspects". International Encyclopedia of the Social &
Behavioral Sciences. 2001,
● Hutton, Patrick H. "Collective memory and collective mentalities: the Halbwachs-Ariès
connection." Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques (1988).
● Halbwachs, Maurice, The collective memory, New York, Harper & Row Colophon
Books, 1980.
● Sreenivasan, Ramya. "Alauddin Khalji Remembered: Conquest, Gender and Community
in Medieval Rajput Narratives." Studies in History 18.2 (2002)
● Talbot, Cynthia. The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Cauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–
2000. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
● Thapar, Romila. The Past Before Us. Harvard University Press, 2013.
● Wagoner, Phillip B. Tidings of the king: A translation and ethnohistorical analysis of the
Rayavacakamu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.
● Zutshi, Chitralekha. Kashmir’s Contested Pasts: Narratives, Geographies, and the
Historical Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2014
10