Why Hindu Civilization Lost | Intellectual And Institutional Decline | Shashi Ranjan Kumar

But this millennium of flourishing creativity soon suffered irreversible blows After Jai Simha who was the king when the extraordinary gathering in Srinagar took place Kashmir descended into chaos due to frequent Mongol attacks and eventually came under the Shahamir dynasty The goddess Kashmir Purvasani vanished from Kashmir Prithviraj Chauhan's defeat at Tarain in 1192 opened the Gangetic plains to conquest Bhaktyar Khilji destroyed Nalanda Udantapur and Vikramshila and plundered the capital of Laxman Sena The Yadavas of Devagiri Bhaskara's patron fell to Malik Kafur in 1307 CE Within a century the Delhi Sultanate controlled much of India There would be no Bhaskara again Only Kerala preserved the continuous scientific tradition into the early modern period The extent of the devastation—material institutional intellectual—remains inadequately assessed and is often discussed only hesitantly partly due to politics and partly out of courtesy Temples vihars mutts—the institutions that sustained scholarship art and science— were destroyed or declined due to a lack of scholarly pursuit petrology and regret India entered a long arc of intellectual development When we consider that India might not have fallen to Western conquest had it not already Having been conditioned by centuries of prior subjugation the habit of acquiescence became deeply ingrained The true significance of this decline can only be understood when we realize that it is precisely at this very moment that the West begins moving in the opposite direction While centers like Nalanda and Ujjain were being dismantled Bologna Paris and Oxford were emerging Thomas Aquinas was born 25 years after the University of Paris received its charter in 1200 CE He reconciled Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine shaping Europe's intellectual trajectory owards renaissance Centuries of foreign rule led me to reflect on India's military failures Technology tactics organization and political fragmentation all played a role in some way degree But what surprised me most was how easily invading armies used deception to outmaneuver Indian forces This is striking because deception lies at the very heart of Cotillier's text advocates covert operations silent warfare and irregular tactics yet historical India rarely employed these systematically when the Marathas used guerrilla tactics it brought them considerable success Success My hypothesis is that India did not develop a lasting realist tradition after Cotillia Between the 3rd and 5th centuries the earth sastra was immensely popular especially in northern India Afterward its popularity appears to have declined quite rapidly Strikingly a key Cotillian term outwitting which was repeatedly used in his diplomatic and strategic vocabulary is entirely absent from the Neeti Saar of Kamandaki a text from the Gupta period that otherwise heavily debted to the earth sastra Cotillier's idea was condemned by later writers such as Ban Bhatta as immoral By the 9th century the earth sastra had virtually disappeared from the intellectual tradition especially in the north Kingship came to be defined through Rajdharma rather than pragmatism The Rajneeti of ancient statecraft a completely autonomous and pragmatic science of governance was subordinated to dharma Equally revealing is India's minimal curiosity about lands beyond s borders Merchants monks and missionaries traveled extensively but they did not produce detailed accounts of foreign societies There was no Indian Megasthenes no Shwanjang ot even Batuta No indigenous tradition of cartography or exploration India exported its ideas freely It was a munificent giver but a very reluctant borrower Between Bin Qasim and Three centuries had passed since Mahmud Ghazni and the Zoroastrians had fled Persia seeking refuge in Gujarat Between Ghazni and Ghori another century and a half passed yet no one in India showed curiosity about this new religion its sacred text or its teachings It could be argued that China and Japan also turned inward like India but fortunately in their case the closure was mutual—they were highly suspicious of foreigners India closed itself off from the world yet remained fully accessible to outsiders Moreover when confronted with the Western threat China and Japan responded more swiftly than India and tried to import ideas and technology to counter the West In contrast the firs The Indian diplomatic mission to Britain sent by the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II in 1766 CE had no interest in Western knowledge or technology The Mughal emperor merely wished o establish personal ties with the British king He sought military assistance to restore him to power His attempt to establish a direct relationship with George III alarmed Robert Clive who prevented the letter written by the Mughal emperor addressed to the British king and the nuzzle of one lakh taka from ever reaching the envoys Mirza-e-Samuddin Panchnuri He who joined the mission led by Captain Archibald Swinton still went to London anyway It is another matter that after returning from England Panchnuri wrote Sigurfe Nama-e-Vilayat perhaps the earliest detailed Indian travelogue of a foreign land When Nepal first set foot in India he was overwhelmed by the disorder and decay he saw around him In an area of darkness he writes with characteristic severity "I quote " a people with a sense of history might have ordered matters differently unquote A sense of history is essential to know what India was and therefore what India is capable of where India is going esitated and what needs to be done to avoid repeating them