Introduction1
There are broadly two specific ways in which social and political thought in India can be conceptualised. On the one hand, there is a relatively easier way of articulating the thought in a chronological format. This is a format in which the ideas are explained in a sequence underplaying the importance of the context in defining the ideas in a particular mould. Those supporting this type of conceptualisation tend to focus more on the ideas per se and less on what lay behind them. Although it is a useful exercise, its academic utility seems to be limited for two reasons: (a) by following a purely descriptive mode, this exercise does not allow us to go beyond what is visible on the surface, and (b) the narrative mode is theoretically restraining because it fails to explain the moments when new ideas emerge as hegemonic, replacing those ideas which lost their explanatory capabilities.
In contrast to this, there exists, on the other hand, another mode whereby ideas are articulated as part of complex socio-economic and political processes that remain at the root of their construction and evolution. Social and political thought, as per this conceptualisation, is organically linked with the interplay of factors involving society, economy and politics. What is significant in this mode is the critical importance of the milieu in which ideas get articulated. Especially in a colonial dispensation, the importance of the context is obvious, for not only does it distort the natural evolution of a society, it also seeks to swallow the prevalent oppositional ideas, presumably because of their very nature. In such an explanatory mode, the complexity of the evolution of social and political thought is evident and clearly spelt out. The purpose of this long introduction is not merely to document the political ideas of those thinkers who changed the course of India’s freedom struggle, but also to analyse the socio-historical contexts in which these ideas evolved and also the socio-political changes that these ideas aimed at.
Given the dialectical interaction between ideas and their context, it provides a persuasive theoretical format that is relative to the circumstances. Opposed to the foundational views of social and political thought, this is an approach giving space to the search for alternatives within a framework that adequately underlines the organic nature of ideas. Located within fluid socio-economic and political processes, ideas are always in constant flux and, hence, their fluid nature. Such a theoretical postulate allows us to both articulate and conceptualise social and political thought in the context of colonialism or any other value system with no organic link with the prevalent society.
Since the book is about modern Indian political thought, its obvious focus is on ideas that critically influenced the articulation of nationalism in India. Even before nationalism emerged as a decisive ideology, there was a long tradition of political thought which provided specific perspectives in which several thinkers interpreted their views and ideas. This is not the right place to deal with pre-modern political thought, though a discussion of major perspectives in which political ideas were articulated in the past is perfectly in order. Broadly speaking, Kautilya and Barni, representing two different periods of Indian socio-political life, are two major thinkers who not only put forward their views most systematically but also set the ideological tone of the period in which they articulated their lived experience. Hence, we will concentrate on the contribution of Kautilya and Barani primarily to grasp the perspectives in which they conceptualised major socio-political issues of the period by critically engaging with the prevalent historical context.
Kautilya
In ancient Indian political thought, the contribution of Kautilya appears significant for at least two reasons. First, the comprehensiveness and analytical precision of his ideas on subjects as diverse as the origin of the state, the nature of the state, the concepts of dharma and danda, interstate relations and diplomacy, the ideas of decentralisation, the welfare of the state and public opinion, and so on are so profound that they seem axiomatic to explain the idea of political thought in ancient India. Second, as a result, Kautilya and his Arthasastra are ordinarily reckoned as the representative thinker and the text, respectively, to delineate the broad contours of the political and administrative systems prevailing in ancient times. So all-encompassing seems to be the scope of the Arthasastra that it contains vivid commentary on subjects like economics, ethics, sociology, intelligence, espionage, warfare, criminology, education, and so on. Yet, the science of politics and statecraft remains the running theme of the treatise. Accepting monarchy as the most suitable form of governance, Kautilya provides a deep analysis of the basic issues of statecraft like organisation of the state, qualities of the ideal ruler, ethical and moral foundations of the society, norms of practical political politics, problems of war and diplomacy, and various aspects of an efficient and effective administration.
Kautilya’s theory of state stands out prominently as one of the theoretical postulates propounded in ancient times but carries some amount of veracity even in modern times also. Explaining the origin of the state as patently man-made, he noted that the original state of nature was marked by the existence of matsyanyaya or ‘the law of the fish’ whereby the bigger fish swallows the smaller fish. This situation was overcome by people by anointing Manu, the son of Vivasvat, as the king. Thus, it seems obvious that as far as the system of governance was concerned, Kautilya preferred the system of monarchy in comparison to other forms of governance such as dvairajya (joint rule by males of the same family over the whole kingdom), vairajya (rule by a foreign ruler by occupation), and so on, the mention of which were made by Kautilya in the Arthasastra. Nevertheless, given the supreme position of the king in the state, Kautilya emphasised certain innate qualities of the king
including his training in philosophy, economic sciences and dandaniti or political science (Kangle 1972: Book I, Chapter 6).
A key aspect of the Kautilyan theory of the state is considered to be the saptang (seven organs) theory. Consisting of the seven vital organs, that is, the swami (the ruler), the amatya (the minister), the janapada (the territory with people settled on it), the durga (the fortified capital), the kosha (the treasury), the danda (the army) and the mitra (the ally or friend), the saptang theory seeks to define the state as an organic entity rooted in the seven elements. The nature of the state which emerges from an analysis of the saptang theory seems to be enmeshed in the characteristics of a strong monarchy with stable and systematic administration. Though references have been made to the elements of people and territory through the overbearing concept of the janapada, Kautilya appears to be laying more stress on the structural dimensions of the state by detailing the elements of the durga, the kosha and the danda so profoundly. Interestingly, the inclusion of mitra as an inalienable element of the state provides a holistic perspective to his theory of the state, for it portrays the state not only as a sovereign entity in itself, it also recognises the existence of the state as a member of the comity of nations having interactions with each other, thereby ordaining the polity a distinct characteristic of pluralistically dominated monism (Rao 1958: 64).
In proper operationalisation of his theory of the state, Kautilya banks heavily upon the twin concepts of dharma and danda. Explaining dharma as some sort of social duty involving obedience to the customary and sacred laws, Kautilya seems to visualise two-fold functions of dharma. First, while advocating a strong monarchy, he never allowed the king to become absolute and the restraining factor was supposed to be dharma. In other words, though the king was supreme in his state, he was not above dharma. Second, the social conduct of the citizens of the state is also supposed to be regulated and restrained by the dynamics of dharma. Thus, dharma happens to be some sort of amorphous and supreme law of the land in ancient times within the norms by which everyone in the state, including the king, has to live his life and discharge his stipulated responsibilities. Kautilya maintains that in order to have the proper functioning of dharma in society, the unmistakable role of danda should not be ignored. Conceptually, danda, in ancient Indian political traditions, is understood in the sense of coercion or punishment. Standing out as the prime instrument of discipline in society, danda was supposed to ingrain in the personality of the king the very right to punish a citizen if the latter is found to be acting in gross violation of the laid down norms of the state, which were fundamentally determined by the sacred and customary laws of the state. Thus, in the formulations of Kautilya, disciplining an aberrant citizen appeared to be an important duty of the king, as the failure in doing so would have resulted in unnecessary disturbances and miseries for the otherwise peaceful and happy life of the citizens of the state. And danda was supposed to be the legitimate instrumentality to bring out order and discipline in the state.
Another important subject finding a place of prominence in the Arthashastra is the idea of interstate relations and diplomacy. In ancient Indian literary works, the whole idea of interstate relations was sought to be conceptualised through the
notion of the mandala (circles). Hence, Kautilya also attempted to explain the dynamics of interstate relations in ancient times through his mandala theory. The essence of the theory lies in delineating the position of a kingdom as an ally or enemy vis-à-vis the intending conqueror with respect to its spatial placement in the mandala. Taking the vijigishu (the conqueror or the ambitious king) as the reference point of the mandala theory, Kautilya explains the theory in terms of four basic circles. For instance, in the first circle, the vijigishu, his friend and his friend’s friend exist as the three primary kings forming a circle of states and each possessing the five elements of sovereignty such as the amatya, the janapada, the durga, the kosha and the danda. Consequently, a circle of states comprises 18 elements. This analogy applies to the other three circles of states having the ari (enemy of the vijigishu), the madhyama (the indifferent king) and the udasina (the neutral king) kings forming the core of each of the three circles. In the final reckoning, therefore, the mandala theory consists of four primary circles of states, 12 kings, 60 elements of sovereignty and 72 elements of states, drawing on the texture of the four circles.
In the realm of interstate relations, apart from the mandala theory, Kautilya also elaborates upon what he calls the upayas (peace politics) and the shadgunyas (six war tactics). These are supposed to be the operational tips for the conqueror to conduct his interstate relations in times of peace and war. Besides, Kautilya puts forward a detailed system of diplomatic relations amongst the states and insists upon a sound espionage system to be maintained by the king in order to remain immune from any internal or external threat to his life and state.
In the final analysis, it comes out that Kautilya is rightly reckoned by various scholars and commentators as the true representative to describe and explain the form and nature of state and society as existing in the Maurayan times. The Arthashastra, therefore, not only turns out to be the authentic source of information regarding the state of things in ancient times, its coverage and the depth of analysis of various aspects of life have been so profound that most, if not all, of the dimensions of the socio-economic and politico-administrative systems of the ancient times may be discerned from the text of the Arthashastra. Moreover, many of the ideas presented and analysed by Kautilya in the Arthashastra hold good even today in most of the domains which constitute the bedrock of modern life.
Barani
The medieval period represented a distinct phase in the history of political thought in India owing to the introduction of new aspects in the socio-economic and politico-administrative life of the people with the arrival of the Muslim rulers in the country. Quite evidently, the unique feature of the Islamic way of life, as it existed in medieval times, was the belief in the universality of the law of the Quran as drawn from the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad. Consequently, the Shariat, based on the precepts of the Quran, was taken as the final authority on the very existence of life and the raison d’etre of the state and the government was to serve the purposes of Shariat. Hence, the typicality of the political thought rooted in such a singular view of life was bound to be articulated by the chroniclers and
the historians of the time. In this regard, taken as the representative thinker of the medieval times, the contribution of Zia-ud-din-Barani seems to be immense, as in his writings, he was able to articulate the scenario of the political life in the middle ages focussing on the functional aspects of the institution of the Sultan with reference to the Islamic faith on the one hand and the social dynamics of life of the common people on the other.
As one of the main intellectuals of the Delhi Sultanate, Barani wrote a number of books and monographs detailing the various aspects of the social and political life of the medieval ages. Sufficiently enriched and authenticated by his first-hand experiences in the functioning of the monarchy during the Sultanate period, two distinguished works of Barani that stand out are reckoned as the Tarikh-i-Firozeshahi and the Fatwa-i-Jahandari. Keeping with the tradition of historians writing under the patronage of a king, Tarikh-i-Firozeshahi was also authored by Barani in a eulogising tone to the rule of Firoze Shah Tughlaq, to begin with. But with the withdrawal of patronage, Tarikh-i-Firozeshahi is concluded with a scornful critique of the rule of Firoze Shah Tughlaq. Though Tarikh-i-Firozeshahi carried certain insightful comments on the functional dynamics of monarchy in medieval times, the substantial theorisation on the political philosophy of the Sultanate period is found in the Fatwa-i-Jahandari, for it is in this treatise that Barani presented a dispassionate and critical view of the political and administrative systems prevailing in the times of Delhi Sultanate, with the king standing at the apex of the state and the government.
Barani’s theorisation of the concept of the state and the ideal Sultan is reminiscent of the peculiarity of the political thought in medieval times. Taking Prophet Mohammad as his reference point, Barani asserted that the Prophet was the embodiment of the state on earth, having been blessed to be so by the Almighty himself. After the departure of the Prophet from the scene, Sultan succeeded him to rule over the people as the representative of God. Thus, in Barani’s formulations, the state in medieval times used to be somewhat of a theocratic state based on the stipulations put forward by God through the persona of the Prophet Mohammad. Consequently, the two holy Codes of the Quran, comprising the fundamental guidelines of life based on the teachings of Mohammad, and Shariat, providing the operational framework of state and government drawing on the precepts of the Quran, were supposed to be the supreme laws of the land and an ideal Sultan was expected to discharge his responsibilities of governance only in accordance with the prescriptions of the two holy books.
The fundamental thrust of the Fatwa-i-Jahandari seems to be on providing the ideal Sultan with a set of advices (nasihats) in guiding his conduct both in his personal as well as official capacities. It is by way of these advices that Barani tried to propound his theory of the ideal Sultan and commented on various other aspects of state and government as existing in the medieval period. Born out of his deep knowledge drawn from his ancestral interactions with various Muslim rulers as well his own first-hand experiences in the conduct of the affairs of governments during the times of the Tughlaqs, Barani’s advices appear to be an admixture of the analysis of particular scenarios experienced by the Sultans over different times, and appropriate prescriptive suggestions to the Sultan regarding the probable way outs
to either avoid or wriggle out of such precarious circumstances. Thus, the advices of Barani tend to have a critical analysis of the prevailing situations on the one hand and articulate Barani’s own perspective on those circumstances on the other hand.
A remarkable feature of Barani’s theorisation on the polity of the medieval times is its distinct class character dominated by the elites having the right to collect land revenues from specified areas (Habib 1995: 82). Moreover, given the foundational support provided to the kingdom by the two formidable pillars of administration and conquest, it was obvious that the bureaucracy and the army form an inevitable part of the ruling elites during the medieval period. However, the top echelons of the bureaucratic setup of the Sultan were essentially aristocratic, as it was staffed with the high-born Muslim men of traditional noble lineage with almost total exclusion of the low-born men from the promotional avenues of the bureaucracy. Similarly, the armed forces of the Sultan were commanded by the predominantly Muslim aristocratic class having loyalties exclusively to the persona of the king and finding a place of prominence in the court of the Sultan. Thus, the realms of state and government during the medieval times were confined to the high-born traditional nobles occupying the top positions in various sectors of the kingdom with the plebian sections of the society standing in total disengagement with the governing elites of the society.
In the times when the whole structure and processes of government were rooted in the religious texts like Quran and Shariat, a profound contribution of Barani appears to be his advocacy of zawabit (the state laws) as an important source of law in governing the state. The basic rationale for the acceptance of zawabit by Barani seems to be his realisation that with the changing complexion of society and the increasing complexity of administering the diverse populace and unwieldy empires, it might not have been possible to do the things strictly in accordance with the stipulations laid down in Shariat. Hence, Barani expressed himself in favour of zawabit whose foundations were non-religious and secular. Though he maintained that the zawabit should not be overtly contradictory to the precepts of the Shariat, he asserted that the former should be given due weightage in the state as its aim is to introduce functional flexibility in the works of various governmental departments on the one hand, and foster loyalties to the king and the state on the other
In the end, Barani turns out to be the real and authentic source of information and subsequent theorisation on the state of things existing in the middle ages. The unique contribution of Barani to Indian political thought seems to lie not only in elucidating the foundation and functioning of an Islamic state based on the precepts of Quran and Shariat, he was also eloquent enough in portraying the subtle transformations which the classical Islamic systems of state and government underwent over a period of time in India in the medieval times. Thus, despite being a conservative aristocrat in his outlook, Barani seems to be aware of the necessity of stability and flexibility in the affairs of the state for the securing of which he appeared to be prepared to even mildly compromise with certain norms of the traditional Islamic law (Habib 1980: 113–15).
As the above discussion of two contrasting perspectives shows, Indian social and political thought is perhaps a vantage entry point to grasp the ideas that were a
peculiar admixture of both conflicting and complementary ideas drawn from various sources. It would also be wrong to simply accept that the well-entrenched ‘Indian’ values had no role to play in this process; in fact, it was a creative articulation of ideas that had an imprint of both foreign and indigenous influences. It cannot, therefore, be characterised as a ‘derivative’ discourse per se; its articulation in the Indian context also suggests that by indigenising these ideas, those who formulated the ideas out of their serious engagement with the prevalent socio-economic and political context creatively constructed new set of models which were neither imitative of the past nor purely ‘traditional’ in its orthodox sense.
Conceptualising Modern Indian Political Thought
Indian political thought involves three related issues of ‘nation’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘national identity’. For obvious reasons, these three ideas constitute the foundation, as it were, of any nationalist discourse. Based on specific experiences, the thinkers engaged in this project seek to articulate a voice which is neither absolutely derivative nor entirely delinked with the context. In other words, the ideas are constructed, nurtured and developed within a social, political and economic milieu that can never be wished away in conceptualising social and political thoughts. What is most determining in the entire process is the organic link with a particular reality that always leaves an imprint on the construction of ideas. The purpose of this introduction is to capture the complex interrelationship between ideas and reality in the context of exogenous but formidable influences of colonialism. Implicit in this process is the dialectics of social and political changes shaping ‘the mind’ of an age that is simultaneously a point of departure and convergence with its immediate past. Presumably, because the ideas that constitute ‘the core’ of new thinking are an outcome of a process in which both the present and past seem to be important, they are creatively articulated underlining both influences.
Conceptualising nationalism is problematic. Identifying a nation is equally difficult. Scholars differ radically as regards the nature of this phenomenon. Part of this reason is probably located in the peculiar socio-economic circumstances that contribute to the consolidation of nationalism as an ideology. Hence, anti-colonial movements in different parts of the world are differently constituted and textured. Despite the obvious difference in its manifestations in different locations, nationalism is probably the most effective political instrument in the political mobilisation against colonialism. What brings otherwise the disparate masses together is a sentiment, articulated in the form of a nationalist ideology that transcends barriers of different kinds for a cause in a particular context. Nationalism creates and sustains an identity by fusing the socio-economic properties of a community with its political and territorial habitat. Through cultural symbols underlining fraternity among a specific group of people, it also creates probably the only credible basis for socio-political unity. By nurturing specific belief systems and displaying its ideas in popularly tuned images, the ideology championing the aspirations of a nation sustains credibility despite the odds. The power of nationalism probably lies in the fact that belonging to a nation provides a powerful means of identifying and
locating individual selves in the world through the prism of the collective personality and its distinctive culture.
In recent years, scholars have brought out several new dimensions of nationalism as a conceptual category. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983) is a major intervention in the debate on the subject, with an argument that nations were not so much the product of specific sociological circumstances such as language, race religion, and so on but were imagined into existence. Nations are seen as ‘imagined communities’ appear to be a useful construct in underlining the homogeneity of interests of various sections of a society in any struggle against colonial powers. While endorsing the basic premise of Anderson, Partha Chatterjee (1986) provides a creative interpretation of nationalism in the context of anti-colonial political mobilisation in India. Chatterjee accepts the basic premise about the essentially ‘invented’ nature of national identities and the importance of such factors as ‘print capitalism’ in their spread and consolidation. He, however, challenges Anderson’s assumption concerning ‘modular forms’ of nationalist intervention since it ignores the point that if modular forms are made available, nothing is left to be imagined.
In Chatterjee’s formulation, Afro-Asian nationalism was based on difference and, therefore, it is wrong to conclude that the nationalist discourse that galvanised the masses into action was entirely derivative and heteronymous. It is true that the non-Western leaders involved in the struggle for liberation were deeply influenced by European nationalist ideas. They were also aware of the limitations of these ideas in the particular socio-economic contexts of Africa and Asia due to their alien origin. So while mobilising the imagined communities for an essentially political cause, they spoke in a ‘native’ vocabulary. Although they drew upon the ideas of European nationalism, they indigenised them substantially by discovering or inventing indigenous equivalents and investing them with additional meanings and nuances. This is probably the reason as to why Gandhi and his colleagues in the anti-British campaign in India preferred swadeshi to nationalism. Gandhi avoided the language of nationalism primarily because he was convinced that the Congress’ flirtation with nationalist ideas in the first quarter of the twentieth century frightened away not only the Muslims and other minorities but also some of the Hindu lower castes. This seems to be the most pragmatic idea one could possibly conceive of in a country like India that was not united in terms of religion, race, culture and common historical memories of oppression and struggle. Here is located the reason why Gandhi and his Congress colleagues preferred the relaxed and chaotic plurality of the traditional Indian life to the order and homogeneity of the European nation-state because they realised that the open, plural and relatively heterogeneous traditional Indian civilisation would best suit Indians. In view of the well-entrenched multilayered identities of those identified as Indians, the drive to revitalise the civilisation of India was morally more acceptable and politically more effective.
Political freedom from the British was necessary not for conventional nationalist logic but because it choked and distorted India’s growth as a civilisation. Such an argument probably explains why the Gandhi-led nationalist movement
contained essentially ‘Indian’ features. Drawing upon the values meaningful to Indian masses, the Indian freedom struggle developed its own modular form which is characteristically different from that of the West. Although the 1947 Great Divide of the subcontinent of India was articulated in terms of religion, the nationalist language drawing upon the exclusivity of Islam appeared absolutely inadequate in sustaining Pakistan resulting in the rise of Bangladesh in 1971.
Constructing the Nation
India was not a nation in the stereotypical sense as it lacked the classical ingredients of nationhood. Yet, there were constant endeavours during colonial rule to attain nationhood on the part of those seeking to articulate nationalist aspirations. The process that contributed to the constitution of the nation began in an earlier phase of cultural contestation through various social and political reform movements. There are three major ways in which this process got articulated. First, the appropriation of the popular was translated into an effort towards developing a national culture, without seeking to homogenise the nation which was not united in the European sense. Since the popular was conceptually pervasive, the nationalist thinkers generally sought to articulate their arguments in popular terms. Swadeshi was perhaps the most ideal expression to gain maximum political mileage in a context wherein the conventional nationalist logic seemed to be divisive. The second way was the ‘classicisation’ of traditions whereby attempts were made to create a history of the nation. By drawing upon the historical memories, the past of the nation was sought to be captured in the form of history. A classicisation of the past involved appropriation of the so-called ‘Indian tradition’, including overtly antiBrahminical movements, such as Buddhism, Jainism and the various deviant popular sects. Islam could not be accommodated in this tradition since it was an alien religion and had also an alternative tradition. Islam’s contribution to the history of the nation was recognised merely as ‘a foreign element’, domesticated by sharing the so-called classical past of the nation. The third way concerns the structure of the hegemonic domain of nationalism where colonialism was never allowed to intervene. The contradiction between the colonisers and the colonised clearly separated their respective domains. On this basis, the anti-colonial nationalist struggle created its own domain of sovereignty confronting the imperial power. This is usually explained in a theoretical format dividing this domain between ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ or ‘inner’ and ‘outer’. The material domain constituted the economy, science, technology and statecraft in which the West proved its superiority and the East had ‘succumbed’. There was, however, an inner domain drawn on the unique spiritual and cultural resources of the East. Although the West was politically dominant, its role was marginal in the inner domain presumably because of its failure to comprehend the complexity of the spiritual and cultural world of the East. This had a significant consequence. With the growing influence of the West in the public sphere, the nationalist project sought to be strengthened by looking more and more at the inner domain. By drawing upon the spiritual and cultural strength of the imagined nation, those seeking to identify its ‘distinctiveness’ vis-à-vis the West initiated
a process that loomed large, particularly in the twentieth century, when Gandhi organised a mass campaign by underlining the role of a colonial power in undermining India’s age-old ‘civilisation’. Similarly, Tilak’s critique of the 1890 Age of Consent Bill is, therefore, a part of wider nationalist agenda seeking to protect the distinct Hindu identity of which caste remains a non-negotiable dimension. In his perception, the bill struck at the foundation of caste and the sudharaks undermined ‘the power of caste panchayats’ by allowing the colonial ruler to intervene in an exclusive domain of Hindu society and, hence, it needed to be resisted.
Context as a Driving Force
Indian social and political thought is contextual. Hence, a unilinear explanation of its evolution can never be tenable. Ideas metamorphose in response to the milieu contributing to their germination. Under colonialism, the role of the alien power seems to be a significant determinant in the articulation of the ideas which can either be ‘oppositional’ or ‘supportive’ of the regime it creates. So the changing nature of the ideas is largely an outcome of this process involving the incipient nation and its bete noire, the colonial power. This invariably draws our attention to an interplay in which society, economy and polity interact with each other in a very complex manner, obviously under the paradigm of colonialism. For analytical purposes, one can theoretically distinguish two phases of the Indian nationalist movement. The first is roughly described as the pre-Gandhian phase while the second phase is known as the Gandhian phase when the Mahatma reigned supreme both in conceptualising and articulating the freedom struggle. Following the rise of Gandhi, the nature of the nationalist intervention had undergone dramatic changes. Nationalist articulation in this phase was neither ‘elite actions’ of the Extremists nor ‘constitutional reconciliation’ of the Moderates but the growing importance of the mobilised masses where the Gandhian voice appeared to be most crucial.
Within this broad typology, one can also think of further classification of Indian nationalist thought in terms of separate ideological moments. According to Partha Chatterjee (1986), nationalist thought in India has three well-defined moments which are defined as moments of ‘departure’, ‘manoeuvre’ and ‘arrival’. The moment of departure epitomises an encounter of a nationalist consciousness with the framework of knowledge, created by post-Enlightenment rationalist thought. It contributed to awareness—and acceptance as well—of the basic cultural differences between East and West. Accepting that the European culture was superior to the traditional East, thinkers like Bankim, Dayananda or Phule were in favour of adopting the modern attributes of European culture to strengthen the disparate collectivity, vaguely defined as ‘a nation’. The second phase of nationalist thought is known as a moment of manoeuvre because of the capacity of the nationalist leadership to govern the articulation of the nationalist thought in terms of its own priority. One of the distinguishing features of this period was the prevalence of several ideological possibilities. Not only was Gandhian non-violence dominant, but there were also multiple ideological strands opposed to Gandhi and his worldview.
Given the articulation of diverse ideological constructs, this was an interesting phase when national political thought was perhaps the most complex for obvious reasons. Apart from competing ideologies that tried to nurse specific constituencies, Gandhi’s swadeshi was also an all-embracing ideological platform where nationalists of all shades came together. This is why Gandhi was most significant in this phase. The moment of arrival is when nationalist thought attains its fullest development. It becomes a discourse guiding the socio-economic development of the young nation that gained political salience in its struggle against alien power. The nation articulates itself in an unambiguous voice, as it were. Glossing over the ideological divergences, the nation was now engaged in developing a unified life history that was hardly challenged, due presumably to the hegemonic influence of what was defined as ‘common concern’. Jawaharlal Nehru is probably the most powerful thinker in this phase when the idea of a nation-state was both articulated and consolidated within this mould. Nationalism, therefore, became a state ideology by clearly guiding the incipient state to an ideological goal that was peripheral in both the earlier phases.
The evolution of nationalist thought needs to be contextualised in the larger social processes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The two most obvious ones are nationalism and democratisation. In the context of the first, the question that deserves careful attention is as to why communities seek to redefine themselves as nations. What mark of distinctiveness does being a nation carry and, as a corollary, what is denied to a community and its members if they do not claim their status as a nation? After all, the obsessive desire of communities to claim the status of nations or to define India as a nation is historically conditioned and textured. Simply put, after the late nineteenth century, the claim to any form of self-government was shelved so long as it was not articulated as the claim of a nation. Colonial sovereignty in part rested upon denying that India was a nation. The nationalist project was not simply something that elites dreamt up to define others in their image; it also sought to identify and highlight the distinctive features of a population to justify its claim for nationhood.
The belief in Indian nationhood as a historical fact was based on Western models. But it ‘was also an emotionally charged reply to the rulers’ allegation that Indian never was and never could be a nation’ (Raychaudhuri 1999: 18). The construction of even a vaguely defined Indian nationhood was a daunting task simply because India lacked the basic ingredients of a conventionally conceptualised notion of a nation. There was, therefore, a selective appeal to history to recover those elements transcending the internal schism among those who were marginalised under colonialism. Hence, an attempt was always made in a concerted manner to underline ‘the unifying elements of the Indian religious traditions, medieval syncretism and the strand of tolerance and impartiality in the policies of Muslim rulers’ (ibid.). So the colonial milieu was an important dimension of the processes that led to a particular way of imagining a nation in a multiethnic context like India which is so different from the perceptions based on Western experience. The political sensibilities of Indian nationalism ‘were deeply involved in this highly atypical act of imagining’ (ibid.).
Freedom Struggle and Political Thought
Apart from colonialism, the major factor that contributed to the formation of a political entity that was India was the freedom movement. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to suggest that the Indian consciousness, as we understand today ‘crystallised during the national liberation movement’ (Oommen 1990: 39). So national ‘is a political and not a cultural referent in India’ (ibid.). This perhaps led the nationalist leaders to recognise that it would be difficult to forge the multilayered Indian society into a unified nation-state in the European sense.
The early nationalist responses were, for instance, highly fractured in diametrically opposite ways. While the Moderate viewpoints were articulated in opposition to the British rule in a strictly constitutional manner, the Extremists, by simply paying no heed to this, experimented with a completely different method of the antiBritish campaign in which violence was justified as well. The idea of independence dawned on them, though their definition of nation did not appear to have reflected the highly diversified Indian society. For instance, the lukewarm attitude to the Muslims followed their interpretation of Islamic rule as barbaric. Yet, there was ambivalence in characterising the Indo-Islamic phase of Indian history. In its later conceptualisation, radicalism, however, was defined to incorporate the Muslims as well presumably because of the impact of Gandhian mass politics. With the rise of the Muslim League in 1906 and the increasing role of religious schism in nationalist response, Muslims grew in importance not only in the British-initiated constitutional arrangement but also in the nationalist political articulation. The other dimension that gained political mileage was the nationalist urge to incorporate the hitherto neglected sections of the society, namely, peasants and workers. Drawn on their faith in national democracy, the radicals of the Gandhian period sought to mobilise both the peasantry and workers, of course, within the broad nationalist paradigm of anti-British struggle. What it suggests is the growing complexity of radicalism as a socio-political goal as well as its ideological components, which were contingent on the milieu in which it was articulated.
Nationalism is, therefore, not only a political method it is also about fashioning self-representations. While the Hindu identity governed the political discourse in the first phase of radical politics, the complex national identity, inclusive of both religious and other vertical divisions within different religions, figured prominently in later radical conceptualisation. Not only were the subalterns sought to be mobilised, but there were also attempts to avoid the nationalist language that tended to homogenise the nation ignoring the socio-cultural distinctiveness of religious communities. Drawn on the dichotomy between nationalism and communalism, the early nationalist argument contributed to a nationalist ideology that was an upshot of a search for an alternative which was neither derivative nor purely indigenous.
Constructing Pan-Indian Nationalism
Realising the conceptual limitation of nation as a category for political mobilisation in a fractured society like India, the radical thinkers put forward an innovative formula seeking to expand the nationalist domain by linking regional issues
with their pan- Indian counterparts. This resulted in two types of complementary responses: on the one hand, it created awareness among people in various parts of the country, though not always affected by the same degree of the exploitative and anti-Indian nature of British rule which, on the other hand, linked the regional aspirations for political freedom with the national campaign. In such a process where regional issues became national, the unifying role of the British administration was no doubt significant. The process was not without friction, however. But the internal ideological struggles produced probably the most complex and non-Western construction of nation and nationalism. As evident, a claim to difference and, at the same time, appreciating the Western ideals of reason and humanism seemed to have figured prominently in the radical search for an ideological alternative. Past was given great descriptive salience so long as it served the present purpose. So, it was not surprising for the early nationalists like Rammohan, Bankim or Dayananda that the Hindu past was preferred to the Islamic past in accordance with an ideological design that had a natural appeal to the majority Hindu community.
By ideologically dissociating from the mendicant nationalism of the first generation of Congressmen, the Extremist thinkers made the nationalist discourse highly masculine. Whether it was the social radicalism of Jyotirao Phule or Rammohan, or the political radicalism of Bankim, Aurobindo, Bipin Chandra Pal or Tilak, what ran through their writings was an aggressive stance on both social and political issues. Based on the opposition, the radical nationalist discourse was articulated in two distinct and yet complementary ways: first, the ideologues of social radicalism expressed their resentment in categorical terms against ‘distorted’ Hinduism while those with politically radical views suggested inspirational elite action plans as illustrative of the masculinity of the nationalist endeavour. It was not, therefore, surprising that both Rammohan and Phule argued strongly against the archaic Hindu social customs that, inter alia, privileged the upper castes as against those at the bottom of an artificial social hierarchy in the name of the so-called religious purity. Similarly, issues like widow remarriage or education of girls that Phule took up clearly indicated the extent to which they were grounded on an urge to dramatically alter the prevalent social norms and value systems despite strong opposition from those supporting the status quo. Even the arguments that Phule made to defend Ramabai’s conversion to Christianity were an aggressive critique of Hinduism that completely lost its vitality by the distortions, made by the Brahmins to sustain their hegemony in society. Second, radical nationalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries underlined its masculine character by encouraging violence against the rulers. This new stress was best represented by some of the most impotent forms of protest against colonialism, such as the immensely courageous but ineffective terrorism of Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab led by semi-Westernised, middle-class, urban youth. Despite its failure to attain the goal, radical nationalists sought to redeem India’s masculinity by their aim to defeat the British even by resorting to violence.
So, radical nationalism in its various forms not only influenced the course of the freedom struggle but also contributed to its conceptualisation. Central to this articulation was a concern for change, whether on the social, cultural or political
front. Radical thinkers inspired the nation by drawing upon its distinct sociocultural identity while their political agenda was informed by an urge to get rid of the oppression of any kinds. For the early nationalists, it was the ruler—whether the Mughals or their successor the British—that was the principal target; for the later radicals, especially in the Gandhian phase, apart from the alien government, their attack was also directed against the landlords and industrialists as well. What it shows was not only the changing ideological contours of radicalism but also its expanding scope that took into account the gradual extension of the constituencies of nationalist politics. So it would be wrong to characterise radicalism as an example of ideological dilution because it was, for obvious reasons, hardly a static conceptual formation. Instead, given its dynamism, radicalism was, as shown above, a creative formulation both as an oppositional method of struggle and a device to ideologically combat the prevalent conceptualisations of nationalist politics whether in its militant or non-violent form.
Redefining the Contour of Nation
The second broader context that appears to have decisively shaped the nationalist thought is democratisation. What sort of unity does democracy require? After all, it was a staple of liberal discourse (John Stuart Mill, for instance) that democracy could not flourish in multiethnic societies. The important thing about Jinnah and Savarkar is that they were deploying precisely the liberal argument about why a unitary nationhood is necessary for a modern polity. And then, they provided their own interpretations of how this was to be attained. Second, democracy complicates the problem of representation. What is being represented and on what terms? After all, the divisions between the Congress and Muslim League turned to issues of representation. This is, however, not to suggest that the state created two monolithic communities and these communities came into being through the politics of representation since the relationship between identity and democracy is far deeper and more complex than it is generally construed in contemporary discourses on South Asia. Identity politics is about expressing one’s agency and creating new forms of collective agency. In this sense, they are part of the democratic ferment where people want to fashion identities for themselves. This process will happen at all levels with a complicated relationship between the levels.
Furthermore, democratisation is both inclusive and exclusive. Inclusive because it unleashes a process to include people, at least theoretically, regardless of class, clan and creed; it is essentially a participatory project seeking to link different layers of socio- political and economic life. As a movement, democracy thus, writes Charles Taylor (1998: 144), ‘obliges us to show much more solidarity and commitment to one another in our joint political project than was demanded by the hierarchical and authoritarian societies of yesteryears.’ This is also the reason why democratisation tends towards exclusion that itself is a byproduct of the need for a high degree of cohesion. Excluded are those who are different in so many ways. We are introduced to a situation where a communal identity can be formed or malformed in contact with significant ‘others’, generally projected with an inferior or demeaning image.
The 1919–21 Non-Cooperation–Khilafat Movement is illustrative here. By a single stroke, both Hindus and Muslims were brought under a single political platform submerging, at one level, their distinct separate identities. At another level, this movement is a watershed in the sense that these two communities remained separate since they collaborated as separate communities for an essentially political project. So the politics of inclusion also led towards exclusion for the communities which identified different political agendas to mobilise people.
Nation and National Identity
In the imagination of national identity, both these forces of nationalism and democratisation, appeared to have played decisive roles. Nationalism as a concerted effort was not merely unifying, it was also expansive in the sense that it gradually brought together apparently disparate socio-political groups in opposition to an imperial power. The character of the anti-British political campaign gradually underwent radical changes by involving people of various strata, regions and linguistic groups. The definition of the nation also changed. No longer was the nation confined to cities and small towns, it also consisted of innumerable villages which so far remained peripheral to the political activities generated by the freedom struggle. Whatever the manifestations, the basic point relates to the increasing awareness of those involved in nation-building both during the anti-imperial struggle and its aftermath.
The construction of national identity has thus to be viewed in the context of a search for nationhood by those who apparently felt threatened under the prevalent socio-economic configurations. For instance, one of the first serious attempts to establish the Indian Muslims as a separate national community was made by Rahmat Ali. Although Rahmat Ali clearly articulated the demand for a separate national status for the Muslims, the 1916 Lucknow Pact appears to be the first well-defined attempt in this direction. In his earlier incarnation as member of the Congress, Jinnah—underlining the distinctiveness of Muslims as a community—defended separate electorates for them as the only mechanism to defuse inter-community tension. Such Muslim leaders were clearly in favour of separate electorates for the Muslims to protect their distinct identity as compared with the Hindus. It was, therefore, easier for the British to pursue a policy that culminated in the 1932 Communal Award. Not only was the Communal Award an institutional device to split the Indian communities on grounds of religion, but it was also an obvious choice for the British, given the fact that Indian society is essentially a congeries of widely separate communities with divergences of interests and hereditary sentiments which for ages have precluded common action or local unanimity. The 1932 scheme was the culmination of a series of efforts, undertaken by the Muslim leadership to ascertain both the distinctiveness of the community and thus the extent to which it was separate from the Hindus. In the context of the new political arrangement following the adoption of the 1935 Government of India Act, the communal equations appeared to have significantly influenced the course of India’s freedom struggle. A.K. Ghuznavi, a prominent Muslim leader, in his memorandum
to the Simon Commission, 1927, emphasised that as the Muslim community was educationally, economically and politically behind the Hindus, ‘further extensions of parliamentary institutions without proper and definite safeguards would place the Muslims permanently in a position subservient to the Hindus.’2 Jinnah’s Fourteen Points Programme was the formulation of the above in concrete terms. These points, inter alia, demanded that all legislatures in the country and other elected bodies should be reconstituted on the definite principle of adequate and effective representation of minorities in every province without reducing the majority of any province to a minority. The representation of communal groups had to be governed by means of a separate electorate. So what was articulated in the 1932 Communal Award was nothing but a well-prepared design to strengthen the argument that Muslims were a separate community with a distinct identity, and so their claim for a separate status within British India appeared most logical.
What the Book Is (Not) About
The book is unique in the sense that it seeks to provide a contextual study of Indian political thought which was not exactly derivative of Western sources. Despite being drawn to Western enlightenment, Indian nationalist leaders articulated their responses which were meaningful in the Indian context. What separates the book from the prevalent literature is the well-argued and also critical exposition of the multidimensional Indian political thought by linking it with the constantly changing socio-economic and political milieu in which it was articulated. The book is woven around three major arguments: first, Indian political thought is far more complex than anywhere else, presumably because of the volatile socio-economic conditions in which it evolved. Accordingly, the discussion is pursued linking the ideas with the context. Colonialism was a powerful input in the articulation of the nationalist response. In other words, Indian political thought during the nationalist period was an immediate response to the colonial rule. Second, while articulating their response, the individual thinkers reinterpreted views on Indian social and political life by drawing on both Western and indigenous sources. One cannot dismiss the emotional chord that most of the nationalist thinkers had with the West, especially Britain, for a variety of reasons. In this sense, Indian political thought is a creative blend of Western and Indian inputs. Hence, it would be wrong to characterise Indian political thought as purely derivative of the Western sources given the clear influences of Ramayana, Mahabharata or any other epic and also various other indigenous tracts in shaping the ideas of these thinkers. While politically challenging foreign domination, nationalist thinkers always drew on indigenous sources to meaningfully articulate their views for mobilising people against colonialism. Third, what is striking in Indian political thought is its changing nature. There is a clear demarcation between Indian political thought that was articulated before and after Gandhi’s emergence as an unquestionable national leader. Dominion status and not complete independence was the political goal for most of the thinkers before the rise of Gandhi–Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose as formidable leaders in the nationalist movement. It is possible that by the time the radical Congress
nationalists emerged on the scene, the constituencies of the nationalist politics were no longer confined to the metropolitan cities only but expanded considerably to the peripheral sections of society which the Congress could not afford to ignore. So the changed social base of the nationalist politics was reflected in the Congress agenda that by including the militant demands for complete independence actually articulated the pent-up aspirations of various strata of people who, so far, had remained peripheral to the campaign against the British rule.
The methodology that the book follows is not merely analytical, it is also descriptive in the sense that it has dealt with the subject in a most detailed manner. Within a broad chronological sequence, the book dwells on the representative thinkers articulating specific points of view in the context of the British rule in India. Structured in an evolutionary mould, the book discusses various strands of social and political thought with reference to their articulation and defence in a context. These various strands are not disjointed, presumably because the context in which they gained salience continued to remain the same.
The book is innovative for two specific reasons: first, besides dealing with Indian political thought, it will acquaint the readers with the context in which it had evolved. Unlike conventional studies, the book is, therefore, an articulation of a process that remained critical to grasp the changing nature of Indian political thought in different timeframes. Second, in order to understand the distinct characteristics of political ideas, the book focusses on various British constitutional devices which were undoubtedly responses of the Raj to redress the genuine socioeconomic grievances of various sections of Indian society. The context-drawn interpretation of these major constitutional interventions by the colonial government is what separates the book from the available literature on Indian political thought that always remained dialectically driven.
Notes
1 Some of the ideas presented here are drawn on our earlier works, including Chakrabarty (2004).
2 India Office Records (IOR), London. Memorandum by AK Ghuznavi. CND 2360, Vol. XVI, p. 188.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Chakrabarty, Bidyut (ed). 2004. Social and Political Thought in Modern India. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Chatterjee, Partha. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. 2004. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Habib, Irfan. 1995. Essays in Indian History. New Delhi: Tulika.
———. 1980. ‘Barani’s Theory of the History of the Delhi Sultanate’, Indian Historical Review, VII(1–2): 113–115.
Introduction
India Office Records (IOR), London. Memorandum by AK Ghuznavi. CND 2360, Vol. XVI. Kangle, R.P. 1972. The Kautilya Arthasastra. New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas.
Krishna Rao, M.V. 1958. Studies in Kautilya. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.
Oommen, T.K. 1990. State and Society in India: Studies in Nation-Building. New Delhi: SAGE.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan. 1999. Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India’s Colonial Past and Post-Colonial Experiences. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1998. ‘The Dynamics of Democratic Exclusion’, Journal of Democracy, 9(4[October]): 144.
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demoniacal laughter Yet I could not pause to remove those grating shoes of toothed steel. Every second even might be precious now.
I drew near the turn, the revolver thrust forward in readiness for instant action.
I reached it, and there just beyond, a dark figure was standing, framed in a blaze of light.
It was Milton Rhodes. He turned his head, and I saw a smile move athwart his features.
"Well, we've found it, Bill!" said he.
I was drawing near to him.
"That scream?" I said. "Who gave that terrible scream?"
"Terrible? It didn't sound terrible to me," smiled Milton Rhodes. "Fact is, Bill, I'd like to hear it again."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"'Tis so."
"Who was it? Or what was it?"
"Why, the angel herself!" he told me.
"Where is she now?"
"Gone, Bill; she's gone. When she saw me, she fetched up, gave that scream, then turned and vanished—around that next turn."
"What is she like, Milton?"
"I wish that I could tell you! But how can a man describe Venus? I know one thing, Bill: if all the daughters of Drome are as fair as this one that I saw, I know where all the movie queens of the future are coming from."
I looked at him, and I laughed.
"Wait till you see her, Bill. Complexion like alabaster, white as Rainier's purest snow! And hair! Oh, that hair, Bill! Like ten billion dollars' worth of spun gold!"
"Gosh."
"Wait till you see her," said Milton.
"And the demon?" I queried.
"I didn't see any demon, Bill."
There was silence for a little space.
"Then," I said, "the whole thing is true, after all."
"You mean what grandfather Scranton set down in his journal, and the rest of it?"
I nodded.
"I never doubted that, Bill."
"At times," I told him, "I didn't doubt it. Then, again, it all seemed so wild and unearthly that I didn't know what to think."
"I think," he said with a wan smile, "that you know what to think now —now when you are standing in this very way to Drome, whatever Drome may be."
"Yes. And yet the thing is so strange. Think of it. A world of which men have never dreamed, save in the wildest romance! An underground world. Subterranean ways, subterranean cities, men and women there—"
"Cavernicolous Aphrodites!" said Milton Rhodes.
"And all down there in eternal darkness!" I exclaimed. "Why, the thing is incredible. No wonder that I sometimes find myself wondering if I am not in a dream."
Said Milton Rhodes:
"'All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.'
"But come, Bill," he added. "Don't let this a priori stuff bowl you over. In the first place, it isn't dark down there—when, that is, you get down far enough."
"In Heaven's name, how do you know that?"
"Why, for one thing, if this subterranean world was one of unbroken darkness, the angel (and the demon) would be blind, like those poor fishes in the Mammoth Cave. But she is no more blind than you or I. Ergo, if for no other reason, we shall find light down there."
"Of course, they have artificial light, or—"
"I don't mean that. If there had not been some other illumination, this strange race (of whose very existence Science has never even dreamed) would have ceased to exist long ago—if, indeed, it ever could have begun."
"But no gleam of sunlight can ever find its way down to that world."
"It never can, of course. But there are other sources of light— nebulas and comets in the heavens, for example, and auroras, phosphorus and fire-flies here on earth. The phenomena of phosphorescence are by no means so rare as might be imagined. Why, as Nichol showed, though any man who uses his eyes can see it himself, there is light inherent even in clouds."
I have the professor's book before me as I write—J. P Nichol, LL.D., Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow—and here are his own words:
"Whatever their origin, they [the auroras] show the existence of causes in virtue of whose energy the upper strata of our atmosphere become self-luminous, sometimes in a high degree; for, in northern regions, our travelers have read by their brilliance. But the Aurora is not the only phenomenon which indicates the existence of a power in the matter of our globe to emit light. One fact, that must have been often noticed, forcibly impresses me with the conviction, that here, through what seems common, truths of much import will yet be reached. In the dead of night, when the sky is clear, and one is admiring the brilliancy of the stars, hanging over a perfectly obscured earth, a cloud, well known to observing astronomers, will at times begin to form, and it then spreads with astonishing rapidity over the whole heavens. The light of the stars being thus utterly shut out, one might suppose that surrounding objects would, if possible, become
more indistinct: but no! what was formerly invisible can now be clearly seen; not because of lights from the earth being reflected back from the cloud—for very often there are none—but in virtue of the light of the cloud itself, which, however faint, is yet a similitude of the dazzling shell of the Sun."
After mentioning the phosphorescence of the dark hemisphere of Venus and the belief that something similar has been seen on the unillumined surface of our satellite, he continues thus:
"But the circumstance most remarkably corroborative of the mysterious truth to which these indications point, is the appearance of our midnight luminary during a total eclipse. By theory, she ought to disappear utterly from the heavens. She should vanish, and the sky seem as if no Moon were in being; but, on the contrary, and even when she passes the very centre of the Earth's shadow, she seems a huge disc of bronze, in which the chief spots can easily be described by a telescope."
And that, remember, when the moon is in the utter blackness of the earth's shadow. Of course, another explanation has been advanced; but it does not take the professor long to dispose of that.
"It has been put forth in explanation," he says, "that a portion of the rays of the Sun must be reflected by our atmosphere and bent toward the eclipsed disc, from which again they are reflected to the Earth—thus giving the Moon that bronze color; but, the instant the hypothesis is tested by calculation, we discern its utter inefficiency. Nor is there any tenable conclusion save this:—That the matter both of Sun and planets is capable, in certain circumstances whose exact conditions are not known, of evolving the energy we term light."
All this, and more, Rhodes explained to me, succinctly but clearly.
"Oh, we'll find light, Bill," said he.
All the same this subterranean world for which we were bound presented some unpleasant possibilities, in addition, that is, to those concomitant to its being a habitat of demons—and Heaven only knew what besides.
"And then there is the air," I said. "As we descend, it will become denser and denser, until at last we will be able to use these ice-picks on it."
Rhodes, who was removing his creepers, laughed.
"We will have to make a vertical descent of three and one half miles below the level of the sea—a vertical descent of near five miles from this spot where we stand, Bill—before we reach a pressure of even two atmospheres."
"The density then increases rapidly, doesn't it?"
"Oh, yes. Three and a half miles more, and we are under a pressure of four atmospheres, or about sixty pounds to the square inch. Three and a half miles farther down, or ten and one half miles in all below the level of the sea, and we have a pressure upon us of eight atmospheres. Fourteen miles, and it will be sixteen atmospheres. At thirty-five miles the air will have the density of water, at forty-eight miles it will be as dense as mercury, and at fifty miles we shall have it as dense as gold."
"That will do!" I told him. "You know that we can never get down that far."
"I have no idea how far we can go down, Bill."
"You know that we could never stand such pressures as those."
"I know that. But, as a matter of fact, I don't know what the pressures are at those depths. Nor does any other man know. What I said a moment ago is, of course, according to the law; but there is something wrong with the law, founded upon that of Mariotte—as any physicist will tell you."
"What's wrong with it?"
"At any rate, the law breaks down as one goes upward, and I have no doubt that it will be found to do so as one descends below the level of the sea. If the densities of the atmosphere decrease in a geometrical ratio as the distances from sea-level increase in an arithmetical ratio, then, at a distance of only one hundred miles up, we should have virtually a perfect vacuum. The rarity there would be
absolutely inconceivable. For the atmospheric density at that height would be only one billioneth of what it is at the earth's surface."
"And what is the real density there?"
"No man knows or can know," replied Rhodes, "until he goes up there to see. But meteors, rendered incandescent by the resistance they encounter, show that a state of things exists at that high altitude very different from the one that would be found there if our formulae were correct and our theories were valid. And so, I have no doubt, we shall find it down in Drome.
"Formulae are very well in their place," he went on, "but we should never forget, Bill, that they are often builded on mere assumption and that a theory is only a theory until experiment (or experience) has shown us that it is a fact. And that reminds me: do you know what Percival Lowell says about formulae?"
I said that I didn't.
"'Formulae,' says the great astronomer, 'are the anaesthetics of thought.'
"I commend that very highly," Milton Rhodes added, "to our fiction editors and our writers of short stories."
"But—"
"But me no buts, Bill," said Milton. "And what do your scientists know about the interior of this old earth that we inhabit, anyway? Forsooth, but very little, Billy, me lad. Why they don't even know what a volcano is. One can't make a journey into the interior of the earth on a scratch-pad and a lead-pencil, or, if he does, we may be pardoned if we do not give implicit credence to all that he chooses to tell us when he comes back. For instance, one of these armchair Columbuses (he made the journey in a machine called d2y by dx2 and came out in China) says that he found the interior in a state of igneous fluidity. And another? Why, he tells us that the whole earth is as rigid as steel, that it is solid to the very core."
"It seems," said I, "to be a case of
"'Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants; each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both.'"
"The truth, in this case, is not yet known, of course," replied Milton Rhodes, "though I trust that you and I, Bill, are fated to learn it— some of it, I should say."
He smiled a queer, wan smile.
"Whether we are fated, also, to reveal it to the world, to our world— well, as for that, quién sabe?" he said.
"Then," I remarked, my fingers busy removing my ice-creepers, "what we read about the state of things in the interior of the earth— the temperature, the pressure, the density—then all that is pure theory?"
"Of course. How could it be anything else? All theory, save, that is, the mean density of the earth. And that mean density gives us something to think about, for it is just a little more than twice that of the surface materials. With all this enormous pressure that we hear so much about and the resultant increase of density with depth, the weight of the earth certainly ought to be more than only five and one half times that of a globe of equal size composed of nothing but water."[6]
"Kind of queer, all right," was my comment.
"It is queer, all right—as the old lady said when she kissed the cow. However, as old Dante has it, 'Son! our time asks thrifter using.'"
As the last words left his lips, I straightened up, the toothed shoes in my hand; and, as I did so, I started and cried:
"Hear that?"
Rhodes made no answer. For some moments we stood there in breathless expectation; but that low mysterious sound did not come again.
I said:
"What was that?"
"I wish that I knew, Bill. It was faint, it was—well, rather strange."
"It was more than that," I told him. "It seemed to me to be hollow— like the sound of some great door suddenly closing."
My companion looked at me rather quickly.
"Think so, Bill?" he said. "I thought 'twas like the sound of something falling."
There was a pause, one of many moments, during which pause we stood listening and waiting; but the gallery remained as silent as though it had never known the tread of any living thing.
"Well, Bill," said Milton Rhodes suddenly, "we shall never learn what Drome means if we stay in this spot. As for the creepers, I am going to leave mine here."
The place where he put them, a jutting piece of rock, was a conspicuous one; no one passing along the tunnel could possibly fail to notice the objects resting there. Mine I placed beside them, wondering as I did so if I should ever see this spot again.
Milton then wrote a short note, which recorded little more than our names, the date of our great discovery and that we were going farther. This, carefully folded, he placed beside the creepers and put a rock-fragment upon it. I wondered as I watched him whose would be the eyes that would discover it. Some inhabitant of this underground world, of course, and to such a one the record would be so much Greek. 'Twas utterly unlikely that any one from the world which we were leaving would ever see that record.
"And now, Bill," said Milton Rhodes, "down we go!"
And the next moment we were going—had begun our descent into this most mysterious and dreadful place.
Chapter 16
"ARE WE ENTERING DANTE'S INFERNO ITSELF?"
When Scranton came with his weird story of Old He, I was, I confess, not a little puzzled by his and Milton's reference to the extraordinary scientific possibilities that it presented. At first I could not imagine what on earth they meant. But I saw all those possibilities very clearly now, and a thousand more I imagined. I knew a wild joy, exultation, and yet at the same time the wonder and the mystery of it all made me humble and sober of spirit. I admit, too, that a fear—a fear for which I can find no adequate name—had laid its palsied and cold fingers upon me.
In a few moments we reached that spot where the angel had vanished. There we paused in curiosity, looking about; but nothing was to be seen. The gallery—which from this point swung sharp to the right and went down at a rather steep angle—was as silent as some interstellar void.
"Bill," smiled Milton Rhodes, "he is idle who might be better employed."
And he started on, or, rather, down. A hundred feet, however—we were now under the glacier—and he halted, turned his light full upon the left-hand wall, pointed and said:
"There you are, Bill—the writing on the wall."
I pressed to his side and stood staring. The rock there was as smooth, almost, as a blackboard; and upon it, traced in white chalk, were three inscriptions, with what we took to be names appended to them. That on the right was clearly a very recent one—had been placed there doubtless, at the most but a few days since, by that
"cavernicolous Venus" that Milton Rhodes had seen for so fleeting a moment.
It was Milton's opinion that the characters were alphabetical ones, though at first I was at a loss to understand how they could be anything to him but an utter mystery. The letters were formed by straight lines only. The simplest character was exactly like a plain capital T, with, that is, the vertical line somewhat elongated. And it was made to perform the office of another letter by the simple expedient of standing it upon its head. The number of cross-lines increased up to six, three at the top and three at the bottom; and in one or two characters there were two vertical lines, placed close together.
"Evidently," observed Milton Rhodes, "this alphabet was constructed on strictly scientific principles."
For a space we stood there looking, wondering what was recorded in that writing so strange and yet, after all, so very and beautifully simple. Then Milton proceeded to place another record there, and, as he wrote, he hummed:
"'When I see a person's name Scratched upon a glass, I know he owns a diamond And his father owns an
ass.'"
The inscription finished, we resumed our descent. The way soon became steep and very difficult.
"That Aphrodite of yours," I observed as we made our way down a particularly rugged place, "must have the agility of a mountain-goat."
"Your rhetoric, Bill Barrington Carter, is horrible. Wait till you see her; you'll never be guilty of thinking of a goat when she has your thoughts."
"By the way, what kind of a light did the lady have?"
"Light? Don't know. I was so interested in the angel herself that I never once thought of the light that she carried. I don't know that she
needs a light, anyway."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Why, I fancy, Bill, that her very presence would make even Pluto's gloomy realm bright and beautiful as the Garden of the Hesperides."
"Oh, gosh!" was my comment.
"Wait till you see her, Bill."
"I'll probably see her demon first."
"Hello!" exclaimed Milton.
"What now?"
"Look at that," said he, pointing. "I think we have the explanation of that mysterious sound, which you thought was like that of a great door suddenly closing: in her descent, she dislodged a rockfragment, and that sound we heard must have been produced by the mass as it went plunging down."
"'Tis very likely, but—"
"Great Heaven!" he exclaimed.
"What is it now?"
"I wonder, Bill, if she lost her footing here and went plunging down, too."
I had not thought of that. And the possibility that that lovely and mysterious being might be lying somewhere down there crushed and bleeding, perhaps dying or lifeless, made me feel very sad. We sent the rays of our powerful lights down into those silent depths of the tunnel, but nothing was visible there, save the dark rock and those fearful shadows—fearful what with the secrets that might be hidden there.
"The answer won't come to us, Bill," said Milton.
"No," I returned as we started down; "we must go get it."
The gallery at this place had an average width of, I suppose, ten feet, and the height would average perhaps fifteen. The reader must
not picture the walls, the roof and the floor as smooth, however The rock was much broken, in some spots very jagged. The gallery pitched at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, which will give some idea of the difficulties encountered in the descent.
At length we reached what may be called the bottom; here the tunnel gave another turn and the pitch became a gentle slope. And there we found it, the rock-fragment, weighing perhaps two hundred pounds, that the angel had dislodged in her descent—which doubtless had been a hurried, a wild one.
"Thank Heaven!" I exclaimed, "she didn't come down with it!"
"Amen," said Milton.
Then a sudden thought struck me, a thought so unworthy that I did not voice it aloud. But to myself I said:
"It is possible that we may find ourselves, before we get out of this, wishing that she had."
If a human being, one of the very best of human beings even, were to voice his uttermost, his inmost thoughts, what a shameful, what a terrible monster they would call him—or her!
And the demon? Where was the angel's demon?
I could give no adequate description of those hours that succeeded. Steadily we continued the descent—now gentle, now steep, rugged and difficult. Sometimes the way became very narrow—indeed, at one point we had to squeeze our way through, so closely did the walls approach each other—then, again, it would open out, and we would find ourselves in a veritable chamber. And, in one of these, a lofty place, the vaulted roof a hundred feet or more above our heads, we made a discovery—a skeleton, quasi-human and with wings.
I made an exclamation of amazement.
"In the name of all that's wonderful and terrible," I cried, "are we entering Dante's Inferno itself?"
A faint smile touched the face of Rhodes.
"Don't you," he asked, "know what this is?"
"It must be the bones of a demon."
"Precisely. Grandfather Scranton, you'll remember, wounded that monster, up there by the Tamahnowis Rocks. Undoubtedly the bullet reached a vital spot, and these are that creature's bones."
"But," I objected, "these are human bones—a human skeleton with wings. According to Scranton, there was nothing at all human about the appearance of that thing which he called a demon."
"I admit," said Rhodes, "that this skeleton, at the first glance, has an appearance remarkably human—if, that is, one can forget the wings. The skull, I believe, more than anything else, contributes to that effect; and yet, at a second glance, even that loses its human semblance. For look at those terrible jaws and those terrible teeth. Who ever saw a human being with jaws and teeth like those? And look at the large scapulae and the small hips and the dwarfish, though strong, nether limbs. Batlike, Bill, strikingly so. And those feet. No toes; they are talons. And see that medial ridge on the sternum, for the attachment of the great pectoral muscles."
"A bat-man, then?" I queried.
"I should say a bat-ape."
"Or an ape-bat."
"Whichever you prefer," smiled Milton.
"Well," I added, "at any rate, we have a fair idea now of what a demon is like."
Little wonder, forsooth, that old Sklokoyum had declared that the thing was a demon from the white man's Inferno itself. And this creature so dreadful—well, the angel had one like it for a companion. When Rhodes saw her, she was, of course, without that terrible attendant: undoubtedly the next time, though—how long would it be? —she would not be alone.
"Oh, well," I consoled myself, "we have our revolvers."
BALEFUL EYES
According to the aneroid, this great chamber is about four thousand feet above the level of the sea; in other words, we had already made a vertical descent of some four thousand feet. We were now about as high above the sea as the snout of the Nisqually Glacier. But what was our direction from the Tamahnowis Rocks? So sinuous had been this strange subterranean gallery, my orientation had been knocked into a cocked hat. It was Milton's belief, however, that we had been moving in a northerly direction, that we were still under the peak itself, probably under the great Emmons Glacier. I confess that I would not have cared to place a wager on the subject. Goodness only knew where we were, but of one thing there could be no doubt: we were certainly there.
"Why," I asked, "didn't we bring along a compass?"
"I think," returned Milton Rhodes, slipping loose his pack and lowering it to the floor, "that, as it was, we had a case of another straw and the camel's back's busted. Let's take a rest—it's twenty minutes after one —and a snack. And another thing: we wouldn't know whether to trust the compass or not."
"Why so?"
"Local attraction, Bill. Many instances of this could be given. One will suffice. Lieutenant Underwood, of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, found a deviation of thirteen and a quarter points on the summit of the Cobu Rock, in the Feejees—one hundred and forty-nine degrees. The Island of Nairai was directly north, and yet, according to the compass, it bore southeast-by-south one quarter south, whilst, placed at the foot of the rock, that very same compass said Nairai bore north! So you see that that faithful friend of man, and especially of the
mariner, has in its friendships some qualities that are remarkably human.
"Still," Rhodes added, "I wish that we had brought one along. Also, we should have brought a manometer, for the aneroid will be worthless after we have descended below sea-level. Oh, well, the boiling-point of water will give us the atmospheric pressure: under a pressure of two atmospheres, water boils at 249.5° Fahrenheit; under a pressure of three atmospheres, at 273.3°; four atmospheres, 291.2°; five, 306°; six, 318.2°; seven, 329.6°; eight, 339.5°; and so on. On the summit of Rainier, it boils at about 185°."
"I wish that we were headed for the summit," said I. "Eight atmospheres! When we reach that pressure—if we ever do—we'll be ten and a half miles below the level of the sea, won't we?"
Rhodes nodded.
"According to the law. But, as I remarked, there is something wrong with the law. 'Tis my belief that we shall be able to descend much deeper than ten and one half miles—that is, that the atmospheric pressure will permit us to do so."
"That qualification," I told him, "is very apropos, for there is no telling what the inhabitants of this underground world will permit us to do or will do to us—bat-apes or ape-bats, humans, or both."
"That, of course, is very true, Bill."
"And," said I, "we won't need a manometer, or we won't need to ascertain the boiling-point of water, to know that the pressure is increasing. Our eardrums will make us painfully aware of that fact."
"When that comes, swallow, Billy, swallow, and the pain will be no more."
"Swallow?"
"Swallow," Milton nodded.
"Great Barmecide, swallow what?"
"Swallow the pain, Bill. For look you. Deglutition opens the Eustachian tube. Some of the dense air enters the drum and
counteracts the pressure on the outside of the membrane. You keep swallowing. The air in the drum becomes as dense as that outside; there is no pressure on the membrane now—or, rather, the pressures are in perfect equilibrium—and, presto and abracadabra, the pain is gone."
"Who would have thunk it?"
"A gink," said Rhodes, "going into compressed air had better think it, or do it without thinking it. He may have his eardrums burst in if he doesn't."
"But why does the Eustachian tube open only when we swallow?"
"To shut from the ear the sounds produced in the throat and mouth. If the tube were always open, our heads would be so many bedlams."
"Wonderful Nature!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, she does fairly well," admitted Milton Rhodes.
"And I suppose," I said, "that the pain in the ears experienced by those who ascend high mountains is to be explained in the same way, only vice versa. They too ought to swallow."
"Of course. At lofty heights, the dense air in the drum presses the membrane outwards. Swallowing permits the dense air to escape. One swallows until the pressure on the inside equals that of the rarefied outside air, and, hocus-pocus and presto, the pain has evaporated."
"I hope," I said, "that all our difficulties will be as easily resolved."
"Hey!" cried Milton.
"What's the matter now?"
"Stop swallowing that water! We've got food sufficient for a week, but we haven't got water to last a week or anything like a week. Keep up that guzzling, and your canteen will be empty before sunset."
"Sunset? Sweet Pluto! Sunrise, sunset or high noon, it's all the same here in Erebus."
"You'll say that it's very different," dryly remarked Milton Rhodes, "if you find the fingers of Thirst at your throat."
"Surely there is water in this place—somewhere."
"Most certainly there is. But we don't know how far we are from that somewhere. And, until we get to it, our policy, Bill, must be one of watchful conservation."
A silence ensued. I sank into profound and gloomy meditation. Four thousand feet down. A mile deeper, and where would we be? The prospect certainly was, from any point of view, dark and mysterious enough, dark and mysterious enough, forsooth, to satisfy the wildest dream of a Poe or a Doré. To imagine a Dante's Inferno, however, is one thing, and to find yourself in it is quite another. These are things, by the way, that should not be confounded. 'Tis true, we weren't in it yet; but we were on our way.
I hasten to say, though, that I had no thoughts of turning back. No such thought, even the slightest, was entertained for one single moment. I did not blink, that was all. I believed our enterprise was a very dangerous one; I believed it was very probable that we should never return to the light of the sun. Such thoughts are not pleasant, are, indeed, horrible. And yet, in the very horror of them, I found a strange fascination. Yes, we might leave our bones in this underground world, in this very gallery even. Even so, we should have our own exceeding great reward. For ours would be the guerdon of dying in a stranger, a more wonderful quest than any science or discovery ever had known. A strange reward, you say mayhap, and perhaps you wonder what such a reward can mean to a dying or a dead man. All I have to say is that, if you do, you know naught of that flaming spirit which moves the scientist and the discoverer, that such as you should never—indeed, can ever—seek the dread secrets of Nature or journey to her hidden places.
We rested there for exactly one hour. The temperature, by the way, was 57° Fahrenheit. When we resumed the descent, I was using the phosphorus-lamp instead of the electric one. It was not likely that even our electric lights would fail us; still there was no guessing what might happen, and it might be well, I thought, to adopt a policy of
light-conservation also. As for the phosphorus lamps, these would furnish light for six months. In this, they were simply wonderful; but there was one serious drawback: the light emitted was a feeble one. The manufacture of this lamp (at one time used, I believe, in Paris, and probably elsewhere, in magazines containing explosives) is simplicity itself. Into a glass phial is put a small piece of phosphorus. The phial is filled two-thirds full of olive-oil, heated to the boiling point. The thing is hermetically corked, and there you are. When you wish to use your wonderful little pharos, you simply allow air to enter. The space above the oil becomes luminous then. You replace the cork, and the phial remains sealed until there is occasion to restore the waning light, which you do, of course, by allowing more air to enter. As has been said, such a phial will furnish light for a half-year.
These phials of ours were set each in a metal frame and protected by a guard in such fashion that it would take a heavy blow to break the glass. When not in use, they were kept in strong metal cylinders. Of course, the electric light could be turned on at any instant.
There were places where the gallery pitched in a way to make the head swim, many spots in which we had to exercise every caution; a false step might have spelled irrevocable disaster. I wondered how the angel had passed down those difficult places, and many pictures of that mysterious creature, as I wondered, came and went. Well, she had passed down and that without mishap. Where was she now? Indeed, where were we ourselves?
Steadily we toiled our downward way. For a long distance, the gallery ran with but slight deviation either to the right or to the left, though the descent was much broken; I mean now was steep and now gentle, now at some angle intermediate. Rhodes thought that we were now moving in an easterly direction; it might have been north, east, south or west for all I knew. Not a trickle of water had we seen, not even a single drop, which I confess caused some unpleasant thoughts to flicker through my mind.
The light clung to them like wraiths of fog, to be slowly dissipated, as they advanced, in little streams and eddies behind them.
At five o'clock we were two thousand feet above sea-level; at half past seven, about half a thousand. And we then decided to call it a day. Nor was I at all sorry to do so, even though we might be near some strange, even great discovery, for I was very tired, and sore from the top of my head to the end of my toes. I was in fair trim, and so was Milton Rhodes; but it would take us some time to get used to such work as this.
A very gentle current of air, so slight that it required experiment to detect it, was passing down the gallery. The temperature here was 62° Fahrenheit.
We had stopped before a cavity in the wall, and, in that little chamber, we passed the night, one holding watch whilst the other slept.
My dreams were dreadful, but otherwise the night was as peaceful as any that ever passed over Eden. Neither Rhodes nor I, during that strange, eerie vigil there in the heart of the living rock, heard even the faintest, the most fleeting sound. As the watcher sat there waiting and listening, whilst the minutes slowly passed, he found himself—at any rate, I know that I did—almost wishing that some pulsation would come, so heavy and awful was the stillness of the place.
But a sound we were to hear We had been journeying for about an hour and a half and had just passed below sea-level. In that place Rhodes had left the aneroid. Of a sudden Milton, who was leading the way, halted with a low, sharp interjection for silence. When my look struck him, he was standing in an attitude of the most riveted attention.
"There!" he exclaimed. "Did you hear that, Bill?"
The air had pulsed to the faintest sound; now all was still again.
"What was it?" I asked, my voice a whisper.
"Don't know, Bill. Haven't an idea. There!"
Again that gentle pulsation touched the ear, and again it was gone. And a strange thing was that, for the life of me, I could not have told whether it came from below or from behind us.
"There it is again!" said Rhodes.
I flashed on my electric light, to the full power.
"A whisper!" I exclaimed. "Angel, demon, human or what? And, great Heaven, Milton!"
"What now, Bill?" he asked quickly.
"It's something behind us!"
He started. He turned his light up the tunnel, and for some moments we stood peering intently. Not a moving thing was to be seen there, however—only the moving shadows.
"Again!" said Milton Rhodes. "But it isn't a whisper, Bill. And it didn't come from up there."
