Glimpses of World History
Page 45
Again Parliament had triumphed over the king, and this time quite peacefully and without civil war. There was no king in the country. But England was not going to be a republic again. The Englishman loves a lord, it is said, and, even more, he loves the pomp and pageantry of royalty. So Parliament searched for a new king, and found one in the House of Orange, which, 100 years before, had given William the Silent to lead the great struggle of the Netherlands against Spain. There was another William, Prince of Orange, now, and he had married Mary of the English royal family. So William and Mary were made joint sovereigns in 1688. Parliament was supreme now, and the English revolution, giving power to the people represented in Parliament, was complete. No British king or queen has dared to challenge the authority of Parliament since that date. But, of course, there are many ways of intriguing and influencing, without definitely opposing or challenging, and several British kings have adopted these methods.
Parliament became supreme. But what was this Parliament? Do not imagine that it represented the people of England. It represented only a very small part of them. The House of Lords represented, as its name signifies, the lords or great landowners and the bishops. Even the House of Commons was an assembly of rich men, either owners of landed property or big merchants. Very few people had the vote. Till 100 years ago there were any number of what are called “pocket boroughs” in England—that is to say constituencies which were practically in somebody’s pocket. The whole constituency might consist of just one or two voters electing a member! In 1793 it is said that 306 members of the House of Commons were elected by 160 persons in all. One hamlet, named Old Sarum, returned two members to Parliament. Thus you will see that the vast majority of the people had no votes and were not represented in Parliament. The House of Commons was very far from being a popular assembly. It did not even represent the new middle classes that were rising up in the towns. It just represented the landowning class and some rich merchants. Seats in Parliament were bought and sold, and there was a great deal of bribery. And this took place right down to 1832, just 100 years ago, when a Reform Bill was passed after much agitation, and more people got the vote.
So we see that the victory of Parliament over the king meant the victory of a handful of rich people. England was governed really by this handful of landowners with a sprinkling of merchants. All other classes, comprising practically the whole nation, had no say in the matter.
In the same way, you will remember that the Dutch Republic, which came into existence after the great struggle with Spain, was also a rich man’s republic.
After William and Mary, Anne, Mary’s sister, was Queen of England. At her death in 1714, there was again some difficulty about the next king. Parliament ultimately went to Germany for their choice. They chose a German, who was then the Elector of Hanover, and made him George I of England. Probably Parliament chose him because he was dull and not at all clever, and it was safer to have a foolish king than a clever one who might interfere with Parliament. George I could not even speak English; the English King was ignorant of English. Even his son, who became George II, knew hardly any English. In this way was established in England the House of Hanover, or the Hanoverian dynasty, which still flourishes there. It can hardly be said to reign, as the reigning and ruling is done by Parliament.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a great deal of trouble and friction between Ireland and England. There were attempts at the conquest of Ireland and rebellions and massacres right through the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. James confiscated a great deal of landed property in Ulster, in the north of Ireland, and brought over Protestants from Scotland to settle in these areas. Ever since then these Protestant colonists have remained there and Ireland has been divided into two parts: the native Irish and the Scotch colonists; Roman Catholic and Protestant. There has been bitter hatred between the two, and of course the English have profited by this division. As ever, the rulers believe in a policy of “divide and rule”. Even now the biggest question in Ireland is the Ulster question.
During the English civil war there was a massacre of the English in Ireland. Cromwell avenged this cruelly by a massacre of the Irish, and to this day this is remembered bitterly by the Irish. There was more fighting, and there were settlements and treaties, and these were broken by the English—it is a long and painful history, the history of the agony of Ireland.
It may interest you to know that Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, lived about this time, from 1667 to 1745. The book is a famous children’s classic, but it is really a bitter satire on the England of his day. Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, was a contemporary of Swift.
88
Babar
September 3, 1932
Let us come back to India. We have spent some time over Europe, and in many a letter tried to look under the turmoil and struggle and warfare, and to understand what was happening there during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I wonder what impressions you have gathered of this period in Europe. Whatever your impressions may be, they must be very mixed, and that is not surprising, for Europe was a very mixed and curious place just then. Continuous and barbarous warfare, religious bigotry and cruelty unmatched in history, autocracy and the “divine right” of kings, a degenerate aristocracy, and shameless exploitation of the people. China seemed to be ages ahead of all this— she was a cultured, artistic, tolerant and more or less peaceful country. India, in spite of disruption and degeneration, compared favourably in many ways.
But Europe also showed a different and a pleasanter face. There were the beginnings of modern science visible, and the idea of popular freedom begins to grow and shake the thrones of kings. Underneath these, and the cause of these and of most other activities, is the commercial and industrial development of the western and north-western European countries. Large cities grow up, full of merchants trading with distant countries, and humming with the industrial activity of the artisans. All over western Europe craft guilds—that is, associations of artisans and craftsmen—grow up. These merchant and industrial classes form the bourgeoisie—the new middle class. This class grows, but it finds many obstacles—political, social, and religious. In politics and social organization there are the remains of the feudal system. This system belonged to an age that was past and did not fit in with the new conditions and hindered trade and industry. Feudal lords used to charge all manner of tolls and taxes which irritated the trading classes. So the bourgeoisie set itself out to remove this class from power. The king did not like the feudal nobles either, as they wanted to encroach on his power. So the king and the bourgeoisie became allies against the feudal lords and deprived them of real influence. As a result the king becomes more powerful and autocratic.
In the same way it was felt that the religious organization of the day in western Europe, and the prevailing religious ideas and notions of doing business, came in the way of the growth of trade and industry. Religion itself was connected with the feudal system in many ways, and the Church, as I have told you, was the biggest feudal landlord. For many years previously individuals and groups had risen to criticize and challenge the Roman Church. But they did not make any great difference. Now, however, the whole rising bourgeoisie wanted a change, and so the movement for reform became a mighty one.
All these changes, and many others which we have already considered together, were the different aspects and phases of the revolution which brought the bourgeoisie to the front. The process seems to have been more or less the same in the western European countries, but it took place at different times in the different countries. Eastern Europe, meanwhile, and for long afterwards, was very backward industrially, and so no such change took place there. In China and India there were also craft guilds and hosts of artisans and craftsmen. Industry was as advanced, and often more so, than in western Europe. But we do not find there the growth of science at this stage as in Europe, nor is there the same kind of urge for popular freedom. In both countries t
here were long traditions of religious freedom and local freedom in towns and villages and in guilds. People cared little for the king’s power and autocracy so long as they were not interfered with in their local matters. Both countries had built up a social organization which had lasted for a very long time and was far more stable than anything in Europe. It was perhaps the very stability and rigidity of this organization which prevented growth. In India we have seen disruption and degeneration finally ending in the conquest of the north by the Moghal Babar. The people seem to have completely forgotten their old Aryan ideas of freedom and have become servile and resigned to any ruler. Even the Muslims who had brought a new life to the country seem to have become as degenerate and servile as the others.
Thus Europe, endowed with a freshness and energy which the old civilizations of the East seemed to lack, slowly steals ahead of them. Her sons go to the far corners of the world. The lure of trade and wealth draws her seamen to the Americas and Asia. In south-eastern Asia we saw the Portuguese put an end to the Arab Empire of Malacca. They establish outposts on the Indian coastline and all over the eastern seas. But soon their mastery of the spice trade is challenged by two new sea Powers, Holland and England. Portugal is driven away from the East and her eastern empire and trade perish. The Dutch take Portugal’s place to some extent and many of the eastern islands are occupied by them. In 1600 Queen Elizabeth grants a charter to the East India Company, a company of London merchants, to trade in India, and two years later the Dutch East India Company is formed. Thus begins the period of grabbing by Europe in Asia. For a long time this is almost confined to Malay and the eastern islands. China is too strong for Europe, under the Mings and the early Manchus who came in the middle of the seventeenth century. Japan actually goes so far as to turn out every foreigner and shut herself up completely in 1641. And India? Our story has lagged behind in India, and we must fill up the gap. As we shall see, India rose to be a powerful monarchy under the new Moghal dynasty, and there was little danger or chance of European invasion. But Europe was already dominant on the seas.
So we come back to India. In Europe and China and Japan and Malaysia we have reached the end of the seventeenth century and we are on the verge of the eighteenth. But in India we are still in the early sixteenth, when Babar came.
Babar’s victory over the feeble and contemptible Afghan Sultan of Delhi in 1526 begins a new epoch and a new empire in India—the Moghal Empire. With a brief interval, it lasted from 1526 to 1707, a period of 181 years. These were the years of its power and glory, when the fame of the Great Moghal of India spread all over Asia and Europe. There were six big rulers of this dynasty, and then the empire went to pieces, and the Marathas and Sikhs and others carved out States from it. And after them came the British, who, profiting by the breakdown of the central power and the confusion in the country, gradually established their dominion.
I have told you something of Babar already. Descended from Chengiz and Timur, he had something of their greatness and military ability. But the Mongols had become more civilized since the days of Chengiz, and Babar was one of the most cultured and delightful persons one could meet. There was no sectarianism in him, no religious bigotry, and he did not destroy as his ancestors used to do. He was devoted to art and literature, and was himself a poet in Persian. Flowers and gardens he loved, and in the heat of India he thought often of his home in Central Asia. “The violets are lovely in Ferghana,” he says in his memoirs; “it is a mass of tulips and roses.”
Babar was only a boy of eleven when his father died and he became ruler of Samarqand. It was not a soft job. There were enemies all around him. So, at an age when little boys and girls are at school, he had to take to the field with his sword. He lost his throne and won it back, and had many a great adventure in his stormy career. And yet he managed to cultivate literature and poetry and art. Ambition drove him on. Having conquered Kabul, he crossed the Indus to India. He had a very small army, but he had the new artillery which was then being used in Europe and western Asia. The huge Afghan host that went to fight him went to pieces before this little well-trained army and its artillery, and victory came to Babar. But his troubles were not over, and his fate hung in the balance many a time. Once when grave danger threatened him, his generals advised him to retreat to the north. But he was made of sterner stuff and said that he preferred facing death to retreating. He loved the wine-cup. He decided, however, at this crisis in his life, to give up drinking, and he broke all his drinking-cups. He happened to win, and he kept his pledge about wine.
Babar was barely four years in India when he died. They were four years of fighting and little rest, and he remained a stranger to India and knew little about her. In Agra he laid out a splendid capital and sent to Constantinople for a famous architect. Those were the days when Suleiman the Magnificent was building in Constantinople. Sinan was a famous Ottoman architect and he sent his favourite pupil Yusuf to India.
Babar wrote his memoirs, and this delightful book gives intimate glimpses of the man. He tells us of Hindustan and of its animals and flowers and trees and fruits—not forgetting the frogs! He sighs for the melons and grapes and flowers of his native country. And he expresses his extreme disappointment at the people. According to him they have not a single good point in their favour. Perhaps he did not get to know them in his four years of war, and the more cultured classes kept away from the new conqueror. Perhaps also a new-comer does not easily enter into the life and culture of another people. Anyway he found nothing that was admirable, either in the Afghans who had been the ruling classes for some time, or in the majority of the people. He is a good observer and, even allowing for the partiality of a new-comer, his account shows that North India was in a poor way at the time. He did not visit South India at all.
“The Empire of Hindustan,” Babar tells us, “is extensive, populous, and rich. On the east, the south, and even the west, it is bounded by the great ocean. On the north it has Kabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar. The capital of all Hindustan is Delhi.” It is interesting to note that the whole of India was looked upon as a unit by Babar, although when he came it was split up into many kingdoms. This idea of the unity of India has persisted throughout history.
Babar goes on with his description of India:
It is a remarkably fine country. It is quite a different world compared with our countries. Its hills and rivers, its forests and plains, its animals and plants, its inhabitants and their language, its winds and rains, are all of a different nature . . . You have no sooner passed Sindh than the country, the trees, the stones, the wandering tribes, the manners and customs of the people, are all entirely those of Hindustan. Even the reptiles are different . . . The frogs of Hindustan are worthy of notice. Though of the same species as our own, yet they will run six or seven gaz on the face of the water.
He then gives lists of the animals, flowers, trees, and fruits of Hindustan. And then we come to the people.
The country of Hindustan has few pleasures to recommend it. The people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of friendly society, or of frankly mixing together or of familiar intercourse. They have no genius, no comprehension of mind, no politeness of manner, no kindness or fellow feeling, no ingenuity or mechanical invention in planning or executing their handicraft works, no skill or knowledge in design or architecture; they have no good horses, no good flesh, no grapes or musk-melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good food, or bread in their bazaars, no baths or colleges, no candles, no torches, not a candlestick.
What have they got? one is tempted to ask! Babar must have been thoroughly fed up when he wrote this.
The chief excellence of Hindustan [says Babar] is that it is a large country and has abundance of gold and silver . . . Another convenience of Hindustan is that the workmen of every profession and trade are innumerable and without end. For any work and any employment, there is always a set ready, to whom the same employment and trade have descended from father to son for ages.
Babar died in 1530, when he was forty-nine years of age. There is a well-known story concerning his death. Humayun, his son, was ill, and Babar, in his love for him, is said to have offered his own life if his son got well. It is said that Humayun recovered and Babar died within a few days of this incident. They carried Babar’s body to Kabul, and there they buried it in a garden he loved. He had gone back at last to the flowers he longed for.
89
Akbar
September 4, 1932
Babar had conquered a great part of northern India by his generalship and military efficiency. He had defeated the Afghan Sultan of Delhi, and later, and this was the more difficult task, the Rajput clans under the leadership of the gallant Rana Sanga of Chittor, a famous hero in Rajput history. But he left a difficult task for his son Humayun. Humayun was a cultured and learned person, but no soldier like his father. He had trouble all over his new empire, and ultimately in 1540, ten years after Babar’s death, an Afghan chief in Bihar, named Sher Khan, defeated and drove him out of India. So the second of the Great Moghals became a wanderer, hiding himself and suffering all manner of privations. It was during these wanderings in the Rajputana desert that his wife gave birth to a son in November 1542. This son, born in the desert, was to become Akbar.