your heritage is my slavery” narrative.

That is what essentially happened in India, over the long historical & meta terms & timeline. History (scientific and living) is proof of it and Genetics is corroborating proof of it as well.

One doesn’t get puny desert nobodies constantly pummeling neighboring states 10-20 times their size without the larger state having insane Human Resource/Management problems.

When you eliminate 2/3 of your population from credible social mobility and best resources (material and intellectual) of the land then yes you are in practical terms Slaving them, i.e. denying them agency.

It takes just 2-3 generations for a population group to see significant physiological genetic changes (Dutch going from low-mid in Europe to Top 2 in topmost average height of population, in around 150 years). It doesn’t take a genius to see what would happen to a human group when they are subjected to reduced access to the average/best resources but their immediate neighboring group who live alongside them isn’t bound by that.

And it won’t get rectified in 50-100 years either.

And India still hasn’t properly reconciled its Caste dynamic, socio-culturally or politically.

The only really mind-blowing thing is that India hasn’t seen a Lower Caste violent revolution of a national scale. Or maybe they are so comprehensively brainwashed that they can’t even imagine something like that. Revolutions only happen when people dare and risk it all.

War without End | Ambedkar, Time, and Stasis | Aishwary Kumar.

Chapter taken from The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory.

“Can the Yālis talk?

If they could, would they tell us about how the great Hindu confederacy dreamt of by those two brothers Hakka and Bukka, became a great empire – one of the greatest civilizational centres of the world those times? The empire not only ensured the survival of Hindu culture. It helped Indic culture flourish into new forms, and created a statecraft which was far ahead of its time and yet, by its own extreme goodness, fell and died a horrible merciless death.

Perhaps the city fell and died a martyr but the Yālis would continue, about how one day a young man with a strange turban and a budding beard and moustache reached the ruins. He stood there watching the ruins with a heavy heart. It was as if the youth was lost in meditation among the ruins of Hampi. Then the Yālis would tell us that one of his friends called him, ‘Shiva, come let us go…’ Yālis, only if they could talk, would tell us of the fire they saw in the eyes of that young man as he got up and mounted his horse. They would also tell of the cry they heard in the air as the youngsters turned to leave, ‘Har Har Madadeo … Jai Bhavani…. ’”

It could have gone wrong so easily – the near death at Pratapgad (saved by Jiva Mahala) or his arrest at the Agra Durbar and then subsequent escape . The whole sequence of events have now assumed greater importance in light of the events that followed far after Shivaji.

He had very good successors – especially Baji Rao I – the primary military genius of the Marathas, who greatly expanded the initial seed into a true continental power.

But Shivaji’s motivations are very nicely explored in “Shriman Yogi” by Ranjit Desai (also translated in English). There existed a strand of public consciousness that remembered the ethos and ethics of a pre-Turkic age.

If you have not, please consider reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10392494

Marathi original, but translated into many languages. May help get a new perspective on Dalit psychology. Will also explain why Dalits grasp at symbology such as the Battle of Koregaon.

take the maratha empire for example. in any sane country its story will be celebrated as a national success. it was a hindu reconquista in many ways. however, of late dalits have taken to celebrating the battle of koregaon, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Koregaon), which was a defeat of maratha peshawa at the hands of british, as their hour of glory! the reason is that british ranks contained a number of mahar (dalit) slidiers, and peshwa of course represented the brahmanical hegemony. so we now have a counter narrative ready, which must be given an equal hearing.

goaded by their semi-literate “intellectuals”, dalits are writing their own version of “your heritage is my slavery” narrative. this sounds a bit unfair to peshwas and marathas in general, because they didn’t seem to have oppressed the dalit in a concerted way. dailits were always dealt a generally disadvantageous hand in india, and nobody seriously disputes that. but celebrating national defeats just to spite their detractors is taking it to another level altogether.

The US elites papered over the original sin of slavery in order to get all the colonies to sign on in the struggle against the British. Similarly, the Congress under Nehru tried to paper over some many religious, cultural, linguistic, and caste fissures in India so that we could emerge as a unitary state. This was after the partition of course.

Over time some of these fissures have healed – linguistic wars are mostly a thing of the past, but fissures based on caste continue to fester. Mythology and lore surrounding Indian history and in particular the period between 1100 and 1800 AD has been sorely tested. The Congress’ grip on power has slipped away as has its hold on India’s historical narrative.

Through the last 70+ years, India has avoided a major cataclysm such as the Civil War in the US. Recent estimates put casualties from the US Civil War at ~ 900,000 out of a population of 31 million. That is a staggering 3% of the population! Of course undivided India paid a huge price during the partition, but it also took a lesson from it in that the elites were able to avoid a repeat of the same.

Comparison with China is not very useful. The Chinese Communist regime was a successor state to a heritage of strong centrally controlled Chinese empires. The history of the Congress Party and India was very different. There was no way that these narratives could have been forced on the citizens of Independent India in a democratic dispensation.

That is the saving grace.

The peoples of the Gangetic plain have strong communal identities, but weak regional identities.

This is not unique to India though. China also had/has powerful regional/communal/linguo-cultural identities often backed by intelligentsia/politic-economic/clans of that region. This is the rift lines the Split-cycles of Chinese history would usually fall into.

The reason it eventually gets taken care of in China over and over again is the civilizational traditions of how to organize society. Hierarchy is accepted as a pro or rather in other terms a necessary & must evil.

Meaning their answer to this is a very strong Center.

One way you can do this is to focus on a national origin myth.

India did do that. Post Independence leaders of India were highly educated and knew of this. This is why Mauryan symbology was used, often at the expense of Independence movement symbols like the removal of Cotton Spinning Wheel to the current Ashoka Chakra.

The other aspect of it was Mauryan’s were distant enough to not cause regional friction but young enough to have a common myth being possible and also critically with just enough information available (since even today not as much is known of that era) its easier to mold the narrative with current era requirements. History like this is a Living entity.

Part of the problem with the word History is semantic in nature, as in we call the Scientific discipline of learning about past History and it must be Objective Truth but the above mentioned Living traditions is also called History. Hence the conflict which arises from semantic corruption.

Living history is important because we’re not the only ones in modern era doing it. What we claim to have happened 3 centuries back by rulers or peoples of that time, those peoples were also re-writing their traditions, i.e. tailoring/re-writing history. Meaning there is not such thing as, Can’t re-write history. Living history we can and should re-write because its for the benefit of the living and coming generation. The scientific pursuit of History is different.

the freedom struggle was by an elite, often anglicized.

This again shouldn’t be an issue since most Regimes (countries, States, Nations, etc) since the ancient times were constructed by the Elites, peasant/low-class-caste forming Dynasties did happen but they were outliers not the norm. Even the anglicized angle isn’t convincing since these leaders could also play the indigenous card when they wanted politically and not without merit either. They weren’t ethnically foreign like many of the past dynasties.

Secondly, US formed a successful enough State despite being created by the absolute Elite to the point they were still owning slaves, barely quarter of the humanity in the land could even vote.

Meaning India could have used the Freedom movement as a Nationalist strain (which was very common in first part of 20th century) for Nation building myths. Chinese basically piggy-banked on this till the last few decades when old traditions are being allowed public space again. It is/was possible but it wasn’t the path chosen by India even though it wasn’t hidden either. Freedom movement symbolism was pervasive (to the extent it is relevant) in Post-Independence India, just ask old relatives if they are alive.

\the freedom struggle was by an elite, often anglicized. \
To be fair to the freedom struggle, it never rejected Maraths or any other Hindu or Indian kingdom. It wanted to build itself on these older memories and loyalties and glorified them.

@Saurav, those two paragraphs are greatly exaggerating.