Cabbages & Kings: Charkha, paper and chakra

“The lie of the land
Was that it was flat
Horizons are circular
And that’s that!”
From The Charms of Chubby Chikna by Bachchoo

I have just been sent a statement or petition signed by 17 of the most renowned scientists of India calling for an immediate end to the violence directed against reason and scientific truth and progress. They point to the murder of distinguished historians and the climate of intolerance that sections of the Indian government have encouraged. There can, of course, be no “rewriting” of science. Logical thought and scientific discovery and theory can make progress and any denial of these is just foolishness and superstition. History is more contentious and yes, just as roads can be renamed, history can be revised. But the revision has to be based on evidence.

I’ve just been reading John Keay’s masterful history of India and came across what I thought could be contentious facts. Keay repeats an observation first made by Irfan Habib who quotes Isami, the 14th century historian, writing about the reign of Razia Sultan. Razia’s contemporaries and rivals in her court were resentful of the fact that she had seized the throne. She dressed like a man, showed her face in public, rode horses and called herself “Sultan” instead of “Sultana” and some of these Turks thought this was not behaviour becoming a woman. Isami says a “woman’s place is at the spinning wheel” — the charkha.

That 14th century historians were male chauvinist pigs won’t come as a surprise. Habib expresses none but notes, however, that this is the first time a charkha is mentioned in Indian history. He infers that since the technique of spinning fabric on a charkha was known in Persia centuries before, it was brought to India by the Muslims. So also, incidentally, was the paper and the technique of making it, on which Isami wrote his chronicle. These facts, if indeed they are such, ought to put the cat among two opposing flocks of pigeons.

Firstly, the Congress which has, presumably through the urgings of Mahatma Gandhi, adopted the spinning wheel as the central symbol on its flag. Was Gandhi aware of the Persian or Muslim origin or import to India of the charkha? It would be heartening to think that he did know where the charkha came from and foisted the Muslim import on his party as a gesture towards secularism. But maybe not. There’s no doubt that Jawaharlal Nehru and the other Congress leaders were aware of the fact that the Ashoka wheel that graces the Indian flag was not a Vedic but a Buddhist symbol. President Pranab Mukherjee and the Congress, manifestly dedicated to the defence of secularism, are not, I am sure, going to remove the charkha from the Congress flag or the Ashok chakra from the national one.

They may even welcome Habib’s observation and express some pride in having a Muslim invention as their brand identity. The Hindutva brigade may have a different problem with the assertion of distinguished historian Irfan Habib via the very readable and plausible Keay. The more extreme among them will no doubt turn up with some evidence that the spinning wheel was invented in, say, 2,000 BC in a settlement by the Ganges. Such a “discovery” would deprive the supposed Hindutva brigade of the chance to say that the Congress has a Muslim import or invention on its flag. The assertion that paper and the technique for fabricating it came through the Muslim conquests of the 13th or 14th century can be even more contentious. Keay is quite certain that before the 14th century palm leaves were used as a writing surface.

The Hindutva historians should stop wasting their time fiddling with textbooks and claiming that Hindus invented flying saucers and discovered nuclear fission. They should rather apply themselves to refuting the claim that paper was not first brought to India through early Muslim conquests. A comedy programme called Goodness Gracious Me on British TV, some years ago, had an Indian character in it who would, in every sketch he appeared, assert that Indians invented any and every thing. It was a standing joke which stimulated audiences to laugh with the Indians. The recent spate of unscientific and nonsensical claims of a similar sort by Hindutva “historians” will cause the world to laugh at rather than with them.