Planet Earth is one single entity, just as the human is one single species. Lines of division are on the paper, not on The Earth. How can you love and worship one piece of the Earth while declaring the other an enemy?
-
With the emergence of The Champion of The Evolution into The Human form, the era of fratricidal conflicts had started. Non-Human instincts to subjugate other beings and hoard the resources of the planet had guided some to the path of plunder and destruction. In the process of resulting upheavals and carnage, the most cunning and ruthless ones had emerged at the top of the heap as the Feudal Tyrant Lords.
Though in absolute minority, the Feudal Tyrant Lords were able to rule by dividing the humanity into bits and pieces and by creating a culture of fear, hate and distrust between them. Bigotry of religion, region and color has been the prime instrument of division in the Non-Human tyrants' arsenal.
The pity is that the Humans have been conditioned to celebrate the death and destruction of their own. They proudly die and kill their own in the name of their tribal Gods, patriotism and racial supremacy.
Blinded to the fact they are - that it is just one humanity and a single whole Earth.
We view the planet Earth as an indivisible entity and the Human as one single race.
India: Past and The Future - Part I
By Parwaiz Khan
A Cradle of ancient Civilization
The region of the earth that is bounded by the Himalayas from the north, HinduKush (Afghanistan) from the west and the Brahmaputra river (Bangladesh) from the east is known as the Indian subcontinent. It was previously called Hindustan. North-Central part of this region was also known as Bharat.
This region, apparently, had been a melting pot of the humanity. Evidently, thousands of years ago, very large scale of populations migrated from the Central Asian region (Region of the Caucus Mountains) into this part of the world - probably escaping some sort of natural calamity. Multiple waves - spanning over many years - of these migrants moved in to claim the Indian subcontinent as their home. These late arrivals to the region - dubbed by the historians of British era as the Aryans - managed to push the earlier settlers - known as the Dravidians - to the south of the Indian subcontinent.
Distinctly different languages (Dravidian linguistic groups in the south and Sanskrit based languages in the north), along with the features that are also very distinct, testify to the theory of mass migration into this region. On he other hand, the current political wave in India is propagating the ideology of one single indigenous people - refuting the evidence of mass-migration millennia ago.
The fact remains that the Indian subcontinent is home to a population that is vastly varied in their culture, languages, features and beliefs. Linguistic differences between the Northern, Southern and eastern regions make the mutual communication between the masses an exercise in futility (English, among the educated, serves as the bridge providing the channels of communications to various regions).
With our human point of view the only relevance of the matter - whether Indian subcontinent had been a melting pot of the humans moving from other regions or not - is limited only to our quest to under stand the social structure of this region. Debate of indigenousness or non- indigenousness is not only beside the point, it is inhuman.
Ancient History
The history of the known civilization of the Indian subcontinent begins with the Indus Valley Civilization - The era of the peak of Dravidian civilization. The Indus Valley Civilization spread and flourished in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinents from around 3,500 BCE to 1,500 BCE . It was centered along the Indus River and its tributaries, including the Ghaggar-Hakra River, and extended into the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, Gujarat, and northern Afghanistan. At its peak, Indus Civilization settlements spread as far south as present-day Bombay, as far east as Delhi, as far west as the Iranian border, and as far north as the Himalayas and may have had a population of well over five million.
To date, over 2,500 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in the general region to the east of the Indus River in Pakistan . Among these settlements were the major urban centres of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, as well as Dholavira, Ganweriwala, Lothal, Kalibanga and Rakhigarhi. Archeological discoveries point to the sophistication of the urban planning and a strong economy. These cities had a sophisticated system of housing, roads, water supply & drainage. The city of Lothal had a system of docks to facilitate inland & foreign trade.
The decline of the Indus Valley Civilization coincides with the heavy influx of new arrivals from the central Asian region. It is probable that the civilization was already decaying due to the cyclical political rot and the climatic changes. Push of the new arrivals into the valley might have accelerated to the civilization's downfall. It shows that the indigenous people of the valley must have abandoned their homes and dispersed further south in quite a rush. There are no records or evidence of these people re-establishing in any other part of the subcontinent.
Indus Valley civilization were the largest unified kingdom during that period. Further east and south from its boundaries, the rest of the subcontinent had no significant concentration of civilization. With the dismantling of the Indus Valley Civilization and the heavy migration of the population due to the influx of new arrivals, the entire subcontinent went into a period of upheavals and population readjustments that lasted for centuries.
After the Indus Valley Civilization's demise, the tempo had shifted more to the Eastern parts and the Southern parts of the subcontinents. Over the next hundreds of years many kingdoms flourished in various parts of the southern and eastern subcontinent.
Indian subcontinent is in actuality a subcontinent, a geographical unit. Politically, it had been composed of warring multiple kingdoms, chiefdoms and feudal state - completely independent and distinguished by their separate languages, culture and the sets of gods, who were always at war with each other.
Much of the northwestern Indian Subcontinent (present day Eastern Afghanistan and most of Pakistan) was ruled by the Persian Achaemenid Empire from 520 BC during the reign of Darius, up until its conquest by Alexander in 330 BC. The effects of the cultural intermingling with the Persians and the Greeks are still noticeable in the northwestern part of India and Pakistan.
Ancient text like Anguttara Nikaya mention sixteen Great Kingdoms (Mahajanapadas) in the regions during the period that was around 500 BC. These kingdoms were named as Kasi, Kosala, Anga, Magadha, Vajji, Malla, Chedi, Vatsa, Kuru, Panchala, Machcha, Surasena, Assaka, Avanti, Gandhara Kamboji and Kamboja. These were all independent countries (monarchies) and the political map was very much like the medieval Europe.
More prominent among them was the Magadha Kingdom (around 600 BC) which encompassed the region of present day Bangladesh to further west into the present day state of Bihar in India. Two of the subcontinents' most influential kingdoms, the Maurya Empire and Gupta Empire originated from Magadha. These Kingdoms conquered many adjoining kingdom and formed a large empire - The classic model. These mega kingdoms brought the much needed stability to the region. During these periods mentionable advancements were made in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and philosophy.
Two most important events of that era were the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism in response to the Indo-Aryan culture of wars, voilence, caste system and suppression - All the glory, as always, was for the kings and the empires - Common people have only the suffering and indignity
Siddartha, later came to be known as Gautam Buddha, was born around 585 BCE in the small kingdom or principality of Kapilvastu in modern day Nepal. At the time of the Buddha's birth, the area was at or beyond the boundary of Vedic civilization.
Around 600 BC, Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, was born to a ruling family in the town of Vaishali, located in the modern state of Bihar. At the age of thirty, he renounced his wealthy life and devoted himself to fasting and self-mortification in order to purify his consciousness and discover the meaning of existence. He never again dwelt in a house, owned property, or wore clothing of any sort.
Again, as usual, the noble teachings of these two great teachers were hijacked and polluted to suite the agenda of the feudal tyrants - and the tyranny continued.
Maurya Empire was formed around 320 BC and was the largest ancient empire. The Mauryan dynasty under Ashoka, who adopted Buddhism, was responsible for the proliferation of Buddhism across the East and South-East Asia. This great Empire had faded out by 185 BC.
A number of small and large kingdoms emerged in the Indian subcontinent after the fall of the Mauryan dynasty. The northern part of the country saw a prolonged struggle between foreigners like Indo-Greeks, Parthians, Kushans and the Sakas. The most important dynasty amongst these was that of the Kushans, who had their origins in China. The Deccan and the central part of India saw the rise of the Satvahana Empire, while the southern peninsular regions saw the rise of a number of kingdoms like those of Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas.
Early Middle Ages
Later on, around 240 to 550 AD, northern parts of Indian subcontinent were unified under the Gupta Dynasty. The Gupta Dynasty was one of the largest political and military empires since the Maurya's in the ancient era. The Vedic Puranas are also thought to have been written around this period. The Gupta Empire came to an end with the attack of the Huns from central Asia. After the collapse of the Gupta empire in the 6th century, India was again ruled by numerous regional kingdoms.
The period after the 5th century was the period of rapid changes in the subcontinent's political map and cultural make up. One of the driving forces behind these changes was the renewed migration and influx of people from the west. The Sassanian Empire of Persia had expanded into the northwestern part of Indian subcontinent. The mingling of Indian and Persian cultures in this region gave birth to the Indo-Sassanian culture, which flourished in the western part of the Punjab and the areas now known in Pakistan as the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan.
Late Middle Ages
The onset of this age saw the Indian subcontinent populated with a large number of kingdoms who were constantly at war with each other. There was no empire strong enough to establish stability in the area - and in the power struggle and conflicts of the feudal lords, the masses were the real sacrificial goats.
Mentionables of these kingdoms were:
The Chola Kingdom and the Chera Kingdom in the south.
The Chalukya Empire in the South-Central region.
The Rajput Kingdom in the north-central region.
The Pratiharas Kingdom in Rajasthan and further north.
The King Harsha of Kannauj in Northern region.
During the 7th century, beside facing the expansionist moves of the rivals, these feudal kings found themselves encountering another unexpected threat; the cast based culture that was ensuring the continuation of the established feudal system was getting exposed to a foreign culture that proclaimed equality for all. It was the result of the Muslim trading communities flourishing throughout the coastal subcontinent and mingling with the local population. The danger to the established empires was probably deemed outweighing the benefits of the trade as some of the kings started a reign of terror against the trading communities.
The historians of that era have recorded the stories of atrocities and pleas for help reaching the courts of the empires in the Arabia. What followed was a series of punitive attacks on the atrocious empires of the subcontinent. But, soon the run away splinter armies from Afghanistan and Turko-Persian Empires and, later on, the Mughals were invading and setting up their own empires in the Indian subcontinent.
It was the beginning of the feudal tyranny of the Muslim denomination in the Indian subcontinent that lasted until the mid nineteenth century.
The first armed Muslim contact with the subcontinent was established by the Arab general Muhammad Bin Qasim when he conquered Sindh and Southern Punjab in 712 AD. From there on several successive invasions followed from Central Asia, leading to the formation of Muslim empires in the Indian subcontinent. Most prominent of the dynasties of these Kings and Sultans were the Ghorid, Ghaznavid, Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals.
The Mughals lived and reigned in India from 1526 to 1858 AD. Their dynasty was the greatest, richest and longest-lasting Muslim dynasty to rule the Indian subcontinent. They were able to unify almost the entire subcontinent under their rule. This dynasty produced the finest and most elegant arts and architecture in the history of Muslim dynasties in the Indian subcontinent.
In accordance with the historical standards, the Mughal Empire had over lived its functional life and was rotting at its core. It was on decline since 1750 AD and a more vicious tyranny was on the move to replace it.
The Great Mughal Empire fell to the British tyranny in 1858.
It was the dawn of a new era for the Indian subcontinent.
