Of the ancient civilizations, China and India may be fairly compared and contrasted, as size alone puts them apart. But the course each took, as history unfolded, was quite distinct.
After the “Warring States” period [475-221 BCE] China began to consolidate and expand, till it covered nearly the whole geographic expanse we know as the China of today. Along with this, it made progress in all the civilizational criteria, while quite uniquely, all its varied populations “voluntarily” subsumed themselves under the broad description of “Han” Chinese. This homogenized and unified China.
India, on the other hand, merely threatened unification only twice during its long history; the first time under Ashoka, and the second time under Aurangzeb; but fragmented into its many parts as soon as these emperors died. And after the Gupta period, it entered a period of slow decline, which was halted periodically by the infusion of fresh blood and new vigour brought to it by its many conquerors. So, though its downward graph was intermittently levelled into plateaus, these attempts seemed to lack the sustained energy needed to lift India up and take it to the peaks that its potential demanded.
As such China followed the classic historical path of a civilization forming, rising, blossoming, coming to fruit, and then rotting, before experiencing its rejuvenation from the ashes. India did not follow this course. It rotted before ever coming to full fruit.
It was conquered and suffered subjugation throughout its history. Each of India’s conquerors was helped in his labours by enemies from within. So, apart from being a land of many variations, Indian history is also a history of many betrayals, rich in traitors.
In comparatively recent history the jewel in this crown was Mir Jaffar, the Commander in Chief of the army of Bengal. Commanding an army of 50,000 he performed the miracle of losing to Robert Clive’s force of only 3000, in 1757 in the battle of Plassey. This he achieved by selling himself out to the British. It is this battle, more than any other, which laid the foundation of the British conquest of the whole of India.
Then came the turn of Tipu Sultan of Mysore, the most implacable foe of the British in India. Tipu was much feared by them. He had trained, equipped, and organized his army on British lines, and no other Indian king of his time had his energy, nor was one so totally committed to driving the British out of India. But during the Battle for Seringapatam in 1799, he was betrayed by his minister, Mir Sadiq, and was cut down, sword in hand, defending the main gate of the fort. Mir Sadiq thus superseded Mir Jaffar as the arch-traitor of Indian history.
[It must be remarked here that Tipu must indeed have been a most remarkable ruler. Despite being a Muslim king of a kingdom with a huge Hindu majority, for more than 200 years after his death, his Hindu subjects kept celebrating his birthday with the solemnity which they accorded to their most sacred religious festivals. This was despite all the discouragement of the British government who succeeded to power after defeating him and had visceral hatred for Tipu.
Next to come into the sights of the all-conquering British was Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s kingdom in the Punjab. But Ranjit’s army was even better trained and led than Tipu’s. So, the British desisted. In order to avoid hostilities, they committed to Ranjit that they would remain strictly on the east of the Sutlej.
There they remained and waited.
Ranjit died in 1839. This was a signal for the British to try the Sikh arms in battle. The first Anglo-Sikh war followed in 1845. After several closely fought battles, the Sikhs were worsted, and their power broken. This was in large part made possible by the sell-out to the British, of generals Gulab Singh, Tej Singh, and Lal Singh of the Khalsa army. Thus, these generals displaced Mir Sadiq from the perch of being India’s greatest traitors.
This sell-out was relegated to a lower slot when Pakistan was sold out in April 2022. By ignominious coincidence, BOTH Tej Singh and Lal Singh were SUCCESSIVELY in Commander of the Khalsa army in vital battles.
That a more shameful enactment of disgraceful conduct could have been played out BOTH times [ in 1845 and then again in 2022] over the SAME geographic expanse of the Punjab, with SUCCESSIVE commanders involved in national sellout, is beyond imagination! All that needs to be done is to substitute the names Qamar Bajwa, and Asim Munir, for Tej Singh, and Lal Singh!
None of the states thus sold recovered their liberty.
Mir Jaffar and Mir Sadiq were immortalized in their ignominy by Allama Iqbal’s epic trenchant verse:
” Jaffar az Bengal, O Sadiq az Dhakkan, Nang e Adam, Nang e Deen, Nang e Watan.
[Jaffar of Bengal and Sadiq of Deccan: disgrace to mankind; disgrace to faith; disgrace to the nation.]
Will a national poet rise to encapsulate in verse the ignominy of the traitors who sold out Pakistan in April 2022? And will this verse have the same scathing edge and exactitude in defining our traitors, as Iqbal employed to describe the two earlier ones?
Indeed, who but the most committed traitors would so callously exert their energies to hand over their country to be raped again by a gang of thugs certified by their past, as is being done to the Pakistan of today?