Muloghonto Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 It wasnt buddhism that made India fall to the invaders. One must remember that one of the richest and most successful (if shortlived, relatively speaking) Empire of alltime was the Kushan Empire- they were outsiders (though not Turki/Mongol/Afghan, they were the Tocharians- the Indo-Iranians who used to live in Tarim Basin) and they were mostly buddhists (with a few hindus). Its not like Buddhist empires havn't waged wars- just look at Burma vs Thailand vs Cambodia for like the last 1000 years. India's fall to the Islamic forces in 1193 is easily explained : India, from 500s BC to 1200s CE showed a clear pattern: The south were always small kingdoms (though very prosperous) and the North, from Kabul to Assam were either a collection of small kingdoms or one giant empire ( Magadh, Guptas, Gurjars, Palas, Harsha, Kushans, etc etc). When India was a giant empire in the north, we were usually the richest, most powerful and most populous empire right up to 1000 CE ( No empire surpassed Indian empires in the demographics, total wealth and sheer agricultural productivity in a 1300-1400 year span. Tang were the first to surpass Indian empires in these benchmarks). And nobody messed with us. Or when they tried, they got annihilated ( we were the first to not just stop, but utterly annihilate the undefeated forces of the Caliphate). But when we were a collection of small kingdoms, we were easy meat for the outsiders. Reason ? horses. The Afghans & Central Asians- first our distant ancestors, the Indo-European nomads, such as the White Huns, Tocharians, etc, then the Turks, Mongols, etc. had tons upon tons of horses. India, not so much. Yes, the western parts of India (and what would be Pakistan) had horses, particularly in the pastures up north but we never had the sheer volume of horses to match these extremely mobile horse-based armies. What we did have, were the hard-counter to horses: elephants. Elephants tool horses. Yes, they are slower, but they are better in battle in every other regard: more trainable, stronger, more intelligent, granting greater range & stability to mounted archery and above all- a beast of a killer in its own right. To top it all off, horses are afraid of elephants, so it totally hamstrings cavalry. You run around your elephants and the horses keep scattering. So its easy to see why when Chandragupta was running around with 10,000 elephants, Alexander was busy inventing excuses to GTFO India with some grace. But the elephant also has its problems: they are harder to control (no ****- they are way way smarter than horses! ofcourse an elephant is gonna tell you to F-off if you try to get it totally killed unlike the moron horse!) but above all, they are a bazillion times more expensive. Which means, whenever India had a big empire, we had the resources to maintain formidable elephant armies. When we were a small collection of petty kingdoms, the elephant factor disappeared because petty kings like Prithviraj or Jaisingh, Anandapal, etc. had less than a 100 elephants to fight with- which makes them go from 'totally annihilating any cavalry' to 'useful but not decisive', due to the low numbers. So India has a pattern. This pattern of 'foreigners invading India when India is a collection of smaller kingdoms, staying away when we were a big empire' culminated itself in the 12th century. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muloghonto Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 The history of that period is very rich in its sources but also a bit confusing. What is clear is this: India, from 700 AD to 1100 AD, entered into a period called the 'Kanauj Triangle'. This period is defined by the throne/city of Kanauj being the focal point of contention between three extremely powerful and rich empires: The Pratihars of western India (who's territorry were Sindh, Rajasthan,Haryana, parts of Punjab plains, malwa & Gujrat), the Rashtrakut of Manyakhet, who's empire spanned narmada to Cavery at its height and the Pal empire of Bengal-Magadh, that controlled eastern UP to Assam & Tripura. These empires were locked in a series of major campaigns and a dynastic struggle that lasted 3 centuries. The Gujjars were dominant at first, then the Palas KO-ed them, then the Gujjars KO-ed the Palas, the Rashtrakutas KO-ed the Gujjars, then the Rashtrakuts fell apart...anyways, you get the picture. by the time 1100 rolls around, India was in dire straits. 3 centuries of near-continuous warfare had left the population less educated, less skilled, more desprate and most of our resources exhausted. by 1100 CE, the Gujjar lands were a collection of feuding petty kings (the early Rajputs), Rashtrakua lands were firmly removed from the northern picture due to being locked in a permanent state of war with the Tamil kingdoms/empires and the Palas had been ravaged by civil war, rebellion and a new dynastic takeover from the Senas. by 1190s, the situation had not changed significantly. The lands of the Gujjars were still in feud with each other, Peninsular India was busy fighting with itself and the Sen kingdom was unable to consolidate power. To top it off, when Ghori came, Ghori came with an army like no other before him. He didn't just have warriors, he had the 'elite core' remeniscent of Alexander but much, much bigger. Ghori himself was either sterile or gay- he never fathered children but instead he took 5000 of his best slaves and gave them the 'west point training'- warfare training, statecraft, read & write, strategy & law. When this army finally broke through the western frontiers, India had no counter. What kept the Indians under foreign/Islamic control for so long, really only changing with the Marathas ? Well that is a much, much harder and touchy subject to discuss here, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muloghonto Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 @Mods - close this thread before Muloghonto comes in and writes a novel on Indian history too late!:--D:--D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muloghonto Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Yes. what really shocked me is the amount these muslims empires penetrated into indian society. in school i learned most about the mughals and ranjit singh in the east with some info about marathas etc. So my understanding was that it was mostly north India and bengal which saw extended muslim rule and Mughals under aurangzeb tried to take over deccan and go into the south. But what really blew my mind is that there were several muslim empires even in the south so much so that there were wars between Shia empires and sunni empires whereas both shias and sunnis put together made a very small percentage of the total population. what the hell were the locals doing and why were they so easily subjugated. considering there was so much infighting between muslim empires themselves and within each empire itself, it was easy for outsiders to defeat them as the british showed. Peninsular Indian history, in a small (and a bit impirecise, i may add) nutshell goes like this: Everything south of Narmada/Tapi has been more or less, atleast atonomous or independent from the northern empires for most of its existence. From about 500 AD, we see the focal points of power in peninsular India concentrate in two locations: Tamil Nadu and in Krishna-Godavari riverbanks. The Tamil Nadu area formed the powerbase of empires such as the Cholas, Pandyas, Pallavas, Kalabhras. The region of Maharashtra-north Karnataka coalesced to form the power bases for the Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, later Chalukyas, Yadavas, etc. These two regions have been in a never-ending quest to utterly dominate the other from 500s AD onwards, till pretty much Akbar's times ( 1600s AD). By the time the muslim dynasties got an opportunity in the northern areas of Peninsular India ( The bahamani were the first), the mindset still didn't care much about who ruled, so long as they continuted to fight the 'hated enemy down south'. Which they did. By the time the last major Hindu Empire in India fell (Vijayanagar), it was too late for hindu power to rebound for centuries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gattaca Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 What kept the Indians under foreign/Islamic control for so long, really only changing with the Marathas ? Well that is a much, much harder and touchy subject to discuss here, IMO. I dont know why that is touchy when we are discussing about India. But I heard Marathas made some tactical mistakes during the wars with moguls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muloghonto Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 I dont know why that is touchy when we are discussing about India. But I heard Marathas made some tactical mistakes during the wars with moguls. its touchy because it draws a lot of religious analysis and far less political.military and social analysis. It gets people riled up, arguing and beating around the bush. The marathas might've made some tactical mistakes- there will be some in dozens of combats they;ve had with the mughals. But the biggest failing of the marathas was that their form of feudal-based government was outdated and prone to infighting that budding national entities were able to fully exploit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmreekanDesi Posted June 12, 2014 Author Share Posted June 12, 2014 Wow Mulughonto! What a great couple of posts. Amazing delving back into history. Ofcourse there would be people who would disagree with the narrrative but that would be if ppl knew enough :P .great to know this perspective. Also please discuss why the region was under Islamic rule for so long withouut any real resistance. what dod you think of the claim above which says hinduism doesnt really unite. Also you think it is just coincidence then that this period coincided with Muslim invasions and our natives would have been defeated regardless of the aggresor? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cricket_Hacker Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Wow Muloghonto is like an encyclopedia :hatsoff: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muloghonto Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Wow Mulughonto! What a great couple of posts. Amazing delving back into history. Ofcourse there would be people who would disagree with the narrrative but that would be if ppl knew enough :P .great to know this perspective. Also please discuss why the region was under Islamic rule for so long withouut any real resistance. what dod you think of the claim above which says hinduism doesnt really unite. Also you think it is just coincidence then that this period coincided with Muslim invasions and our natives would have been defeated regardless of the aggresor? 1. Claim that hinduism doesn't unite: it depends on how you look at it. I'd say hinduism (or buddhism) is extremely unifying because it is more respectful towards what people actually are, rather than what some random God wants us to be. It is no joke that hinduism has survived for so long despite so much pressures of survival because it unites us on a socio-cultural level. But hinduism doesnt unite on the battlefront like Christianity or Islam does. Sure, hindus have banded together from time to time for survial but hey, even animals band together for surviving a common threat. We don't go 'for allah/for jehovah/down with the infidels' and go fight them as hindus. Its much much easier to inspire religious hatred for war using jihad/crusades in some religions than it is to inspire war augumented with religious hatred in hinduism....what is our word for jihad ?! 2. real resistence died when Bhaktiyar Khilji happened. Think on this for a second: in 1200 AD, India hosted seven or eight of 15-20 'universities' in the world. The only other ones i can think of, in the scope and scale of Indian centers of learning were a half dozen or so in Europe, Constantinople, Baghdad, Cairo and the Chinese imperial civil service. These universities had dozens upon dozens of various schools of philosophy, mathematics, trade, law, with hundreds of teachers, thousands of students, some living on campus. By 1205, three or four of these universities in India had been utterly destroyed. By 1220, all but one was destroyed. Where would America be, if we executed or exiled 90% of all professors and students in like the top 50 universities in America ? The crushing destruction of our centers of learning, coupled with a strong military superiority our islamic adversaries had, were, in bold strokes, the big reason why India never really rose up. There are many factors: Delhi Sultans were adept at keeping the military advantage and in times of weakness, the hindu petty kings never quite got the scope to consolidate or expand: for when islamic power weakened in India, it was quickly re-fuelled by invasions from afghanistan or central Asia. We lost a significant advantage in techonology & skill, particularly governance, with the fall of the universities in India. We also lost a significant amount of our wealth: not from loot or plunder but because the Arab forays into India that we crushed in the 700s AD resulted in the arabs taking two very valuable products out of India and starting to make their own: rice and cotton. A major consequence of the Gujjar-Pal-Rashtrakuta war period was that slowly but surely, we gave up our dominance of the sea trade routes, particularly in the arabian sea, to the foreigners. Yes, the Cholas were great traders but they mostly dominated the Bay of Bengal trade, not the Arabian sea trade as well. The Gujrati kingdom became formidable traders in the arabian sea, but not till the 1400s. What is also important to realize that we Indians became extremely feudal by 600s-700s CE and remained so. In feudal society, its all about the land-owning 'raja/thakur' and loyalty to them, the concept of 'nation' is largely absent or secondary to personal power struggles between powerful nobles. So there was no strong all-India movement or impetus to cast out the enemies, we were busier with which raja is going to be better than the other raja, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triam Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Horses are a very strong point. If you want to delve further read 'Guns germs and steel', although it is more specific to Europe and Africa etc a lot of those points will carry over. The premise of the book is why were the white Europeans successful in conquering the world as opposed to any other race be it Africans, Native Indians or asians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rahulrulezz Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Amazing just amazing Mughalanto... You know your stuff dude... but lets talk about Mughals first.. How did Babur could defeat Delhi Sultante. Also another major question, Hemu.. How come when he had huge resources of elephants and horses, lost to a smaller army of Akbar/Bairam Khan.. I know the history on how Hemu died and all but still, what was the biggest reason why Hemu lost to Akbar.. I still feel that had Hemu won the war, subcontinent would look totally different Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmreekanDesi Posted June 12, 2014 Author Share Posted June 12, 2014 Amazing just amazing Mughalanto... You know your stuff dude... but lets talk about Mughals first.. How did Babur could defeat Delhi Sultante. Also another major question, Hemu.. How come when he had huge resources of elephants and horses, lost to a smaller army of Akbar/Bairam Khan.. I know the history on how Hemu died and all but still, what was the biggest reason why Hemu lost to Akbar.. I still feel that had Hemu won the war, subcontinent would look totally different I think to understand this you need to delve into Hemu's history. The thing is that Hemu was never from a ruling class. He was merely an average tradesman who made it big in the muslim Sher Shah suri's emire first as a trader and then an advisor. When the new emperor of the kingdom came to power and had no interest in actually ruling, he made Hemu his advisor, gave him so many responsibilities that he was the de facto king. His army mostly contained Afghans/pashtuns. he tried to induct hindus but even then the number was negligible. So it was this army that he used on the marchtowards Delhi. In their minds the pashtun soldiers were still fighting for their muslim king against the invaders (the mughals who depsite being muslim were seen as invaders at this point.) But after defeating Akbars forces in delhi, Hemu appointed himself as the King of a new empire. He tried a lot to change the makeup of the army to have more hindus but was unsuccessful to and when Akbar made his return, the idea of fighting a muslim army for a hindu king did not appeal to the majority pashtun soldiers and their attempts were half hearted at best. After their victory the Mughals did punish the hindus and beheaded them while sparing the Pashtun soldiers and offering to make them part of their army. Hemu's reign lasted less than a year and really his fault was that he was never using his OWN army and empire. He was the only non-Muslim ruler of north India in the preceding 300 years and for the next couple of hundred years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panther Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Greatest achievement of the Conquerors was the fact they were able to hold on to their religious identity and avoid total assimilation. There were a few like akbar though............ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fineleg Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 vvslaxman (the legend, not icf-er): "We did get some great indian empires like Venkatraghavan, swaroop kishen" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muloghonto Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Amazing just amazing Mughalanto... You know your stuff dude... but lets talk about Mughals first.. How did Babur could defeat Delhi Sultante. Also another major question, Hemu.. How come when he had huge resources of elephants and horses, lost to a smaller army of Akbar/Bairam Khan.. I know the history on how Hemu died and all but still, what was the biggest reason why Hemu lost to Akbar.. I still feel that had Hemu won the war, subcontinent would look totally different baburs suceess was determined by cannons. He was the first to bring cannons to India and Indians had no answer to them. As it happens, cannons scare the shyte out of the elephants, something the Indians could not have predicted or deal with. Hemu lost to Akbar/Bairam Khan because of a freak shot to the eye. See, Indians were feudal back then. Once the lord is dead, its over. It wasnt a fight for the nation/kingdom/country, it was a fight for hemu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmreekanDesi Posted June 13, 2014 Author Share Posted June 13, 2014 Greatest achievement of the Conquerors was the fact they were able to hold on to their religious identity and avoid total assimilation. There were a few like akbar though............ dont know how its an achievement but they definitely treated the hindus worse than second class citizens. hindus were beaten by these muslims aremies so many times that its mind boggling. the massaccre that has happened is mind boggling.. Its impossible i know but would definitely be interesting to see how man hindu natives wee massacred between 1100 ti 1800's by these muslim armies Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maniac Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 vvslaxman (the legend, not icf-er): "We did get some great indian empires like Venkatraghavan, swaroop kishen" :haha: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randomGuy Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 dont know how its an achievement but they definitely treated the hindus worse than second class citizens. hindus were beaten by these muslims aremies so many times that its mind boggling. the massaccre that has happened is mind boggling.. Its impossible i know but would definitely be interesting to see how man hindu natives wee massacred between 1100 ti 1800's by these muslim armies Please write abt some of these massacres. Among Mughal emperors, I had an impression that Aurangzeb was bad, but rest of them weren't as bad esp. Akbar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoda-esque Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Please write abt some of these massacres. Among Mughal emperors' date=' I had an impression that Aurangzeb was bad, but rest of them weren't as bad esp. Akbar.[/quote'] He was ruthless initially Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urbestfriend Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 vvslaxman (the legend, not icf-er): "We did get some great indian empires like Venkatraghavan, swaroop kishen" :cantstop: OP is right, Indian empires are always weak :(( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts