Review: Upinder Singh's Latest Is Unable To Move Away From Stereotypes When Talking About 'Dharma' And 'Varna'

Dr. Upinder Singh is a really eminent historian of ancient India. Her book ‘A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India’ (Pearson, 2008) sets the standards in history textbook writing globally. One wishes our textbook makers use this book as a model for our history textbooks. Her book ‘Political Violence in Ancient India’ (HUP, 2017) is another scholarly book that deals with a tough subject. Here Dr. Singh avoids the attractive pitfalls of Brahminism versus Buddhism and shows an exemplary academic rigour.

Right from the introduction Dr. Singh leads the reader through a scholarly odyssey. She uses the term the ‘medieval Islamicate heritage’ (p.15) explaining the term as broader than ‘Islamic’, which refers to only the religious, and as referring to ‘the various features of regions influenced by Islam’. So now apart from 'Islamic' and 'Islamist', we also have Islamicate.

The book contains five long essays. Mostly the template is to take a contemporary event and then relate it to ancient Indian past – usually ending up showing how the understanding of the real complicated nature of the past might help us in a better understanding of the present – quiet a noble endeavour.

Accordingly she takes up the case of Harappan civilisation, ‘as now, urban life was sustained by countless workers who built the structures, cleaned the drains and sewers, and provided labour and services to keep the cities going’. But it was not clear if ‘slavery’ existed (p.21). And it was in Rig Veda Samhita where ‘the earliest clear references’ to slavery are seen. The essay declares that the Vedas were ‘composed during c. 1500–1000 BCE in the valleys of the Indus, its tributaries and the Ghaggar–Hakra’ (p. 21). In her textbook on ancient Indian culture Dr. Singh had stated contrarily:

The turn from this flexible position to the emphatic assertion of place Rig Veda composition at 1500-1000 BCE is amusing.

That would suggest a continuity. However, the essay pushes a civilisational break here and so the emphatic assertion of date.

While pointing out that the Dasas and Dasis (crudely slave men and women) existed, the essay acknowledges that ‘the children born of slave women could rise in the world.’ The crucial question omitted is this: while the Vedic society was having hierarchies and consequently social exclusion, like any other contemporary society, what were the values of Vedic literature? Kavashaka instance, which the essay refers to but marginalises as an exception, shows that Vedic values speak against social exclusion.

Here the essay flatly states the idealised view of varna division of society and the ashrama sequence of individual life as ‘false’. The essay considers varna as an ideology – an imposed ideology by Brahmins:

This is demonstrably wrong.

Dharma not central in Pre-Buddhist Vedic Tradition?

The scholarly consensus is that Chandogya, Brhadaranyaka and Taittririya Upanishads are pre-Buddhist.

The Chandogya Upanishad (2:22:1) categorises Dharma into three groups. In the first category consists performing sacrifice, gaining knowledge and sharing the wealth for the needy. Tapas is the second category. The third is Brahmacharya life in a Gurukul – which essentially means a lifelong dedicated pursuit of knowledge.

A more relevant description of Dharma comes in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which also presents a version of the formation of varnas which is very different from that of Purusha Sukta.

Prof. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, points out that unlike its Vedic counterpart, this version has gone ‘relatively unnoticed’ though this account ‘is also historical and etiological.'

Prof. Sharma further points out that given the facts that this Upanishad is one of the early Upanishads or perhaps the earliest and Purusha Sukta belonging to the late parts of the Vedas – both can be considered as almost contemporaneous accounts. Here the Upanishad speaks of all being Brahman in the beginning. Then the Kshatriyas were formed and they were conferred superiority by the Brahmins. So, whoever attacks the Brahmin, attacks his own source. Then came the Vaishyas and then the Shudras. But each time the Brahman generated the varna it was because it was not fully developed (Br. Upanishad, I.4.11-14).

Here not only the head-foot model is abandoned but rather an evolutionary picture is assumed with all varnas derived from the Brahman substratum. More importantly, Dharma becomes supreme over the ruler and becomes the power of the powerless, strength of the weak and the voice of the voiceless. Clearly, not just individual morality but social ethics get imputed into the notion of Dharma here.

As we can see in repeated instances in the case of later Hindu literature, the notion of Dharma plays a strong role over and above the social hierarchies – as in the case of Chilapathikaram (5^th to 6^th century CE) where the king dies at once when he learns that he had wrongly executed Kovalan belonging to the Vaishya varna. Halasya Mahatmya (not earlier than 9^th century CE) records the efforts taken by the king to not falsely accuse a forest dwelling hunter who was charged by a Brahmin of murdering his wife. In all these Dharma becomes mightier than the king and secures justice for the weak.

In the epic we find Yudhishthira, who himself was called Dharma, answering his ancestor-turned-serpent Nahusha, the question on who is a Brahmana:

The serpent goes on to state that these qualities could be seen in people born of Shudra parents and so if they should also be called Brahmin. Yudhishthira answers in the affirmative.

Later in a conversation between two Rishis Bhrigu and Bharadwaja, the former starts with the fixed nature of varnas but Bharadwaja states that all Varnas are mixed.

Bhrigu now explains the origin of different varnas, which is not based on Purusha Sukta but gels more (but not exactly) with the account given in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Everything arose from Brahman. Subsequently everyone was in the beginning a Brahmana. In the celebrated cosmic form that Krishna shows Arjuna, the form does not have the varnas as part of It.

In between these two dialogues we have the Bhagavad Gita which emphasises Guna-Karma and not Kula-Janma. Clearly the tension between birth-based and worth-based conceptions of varna can be seen between the ideal values and the social reality.

Unfortunately, Dr. Upinder Singh does not even appear to try to present these complex dynamics. Rather, she goes by the framework that stereotypes the Buddhist-Jain movements as proto-reformist and Bhakti as a partial reformist response to the assumed challenges of Jainism and Buddhism.

Even more glaring fallacies of bias come later in the book.