India of today is the creation of the British. The questions, “What is India? What does this name India really Signify?”, have been answered by John Strachey, 100 years back, in his book, India – its Administration and Progress, 1888, We quote some excerpts. Strachey writes, ‘There is no such country, and this is the first and most essential fact about India that can be learned.
“India is a name which we give to a great region including a multitude of different countries. The name Hindustan is never applied in India, as we apply it, to the whole of the Indian continent: it signifies the country north of the Narbada River, and especially the northern portion of the basins of the Ganges and Jamna.
“| have been told by intelligent Natives of India who have visited Europe that they could see little difference between the European countries through which they had travelled; The differences between the countries of India, – between, for instance, Bengal and the Punjab, or between Madras and Rajput Ana – seemed to them, on the other hand, immense, and beyond comparison, greater than those existing between the counties of Europe.
“The differences between the countries of Europe are undoubtedly smaller than those between the countries of India. European civilization has grown up under conditions which have produced a larger mea- sure of uniformity than has been reached in the countries of the Indian continent, often separated from each other by greater distances of climate. lt is probable that not less than fifty languages, which may rightly be called sure of uniformity than has been reached in the countries of the Indian continent, often separated from each other by greater distances of climate. it is probable that not less than fifty languages, which may rightly be called separate, are spoken in India. The diversities of religion and race are as wide in India as in Europe, and political catastrophes have been as frequent and as violent. There are no countries in civilized Europe in which the people differ so much as the man of Madras differ from the Sikh, and the languages of Southern India are as unintelligible in Lahore as they would be in London. A native of Calcutta or Bombay is as much a foreigner in Rome or Paris.
“I have spoken of the different countries of India, but they are not countries in the ordinary European sense. In India, as Sir Alfred Lyall has explained in his Asiatic Studies, there are no nations of the modern European type J.R. Seeley writes in ‘The Expansion of England’, One gradually discovers the population of Central India to be distributed, not into great governments, or nationalities, or religious denominations,…but into various and manifold denominations of tribes, clans, seats, castes, and sub-castes, religious orders and devotional brotherhoods’.
This is the first and most essential thing to learn about India – that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India, possessing, according to European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious no Indian, nation, no people of India, of which we hear so much.”
“No superiority of the Englishman would have enabled England to conquer by her own military power the continent of India with its 300 millions of people, nor could she hold it in subjection if it had been occupied by distinct nations”.
“We have never destroyed in India a National govt, no national sentiment has been wounded, no national pride has been humiliated; because no Indian nationalities have existed. .Such administrative bonds of union can in no way lead towards the growth of a single Indian nationality. It is conceivable that national sympathies may arise in particular Indian countries; but that they should ever extend to India generally, that men of Bombay, the Punjab, Bengal, and Madras should ever feel that they belong to one great Indian nation, is impossible.”
“I wish especially to insist on the fact that we can never hope to arrive at any accurate knowledge of India until we properly appreciate the immense diversities of the countries included under that name, and understand that there is no part of the world in which it is easier to be misled by generations.” (Dalit Voice).
(The book is available at the National Library Calcutta and was brought to the notice of DV by Mr’s Surinder Kaur)
Article extracted from this publication >> July 12, 1991
