Lords of the Deccan

ANIRUDH Kanisetti’s Lords of the Deccan reads like a summer blockbuster - lots of drama and intrigue, full of heroes and villains - and takes you on a journey worth the price of admission. Skilfully packaged within that perfectly enjoyable exterior though, is a nuanced take on medieval South Indian history that challenges the way we are conditioned to comprehend India’s history. Matsyanyaya was the law of the land, heroes and villains consistently swapped positions and the conflicts, like in real life, were fueled by human desires like power, legacy & self-preservation. Kanisetti joins a burgeoning club of contemporary historians adopting the fairly novel approach of looking at our subcontinent’s history, in all it’s monumental greyness, in a self-respecting & honest manner, unencumbered by post-colonial biases. This generation of historians is choosing attention to detail and objectivity rather than hagiographical, retrofitted historical analysis. Not unlike The Nutmeg’s Curse, this book foregrounds history against natural landscapes such as the Vindhyas, the Coasts & the great Indian rivers (Narmada, Ganga, Yamuna, Cauvery) rather than a lifeless, homogenized, chronological timeline preferred by western colonial thought. Enriched by Kanisetti’s surefooted & imaginative narrative flourishes, the history presented in the book is thoroughly researched and spans the rise & fall of 3 prominent dynasties of the region that shaped the landscape & the culture - the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas & the formidably seismic Cholas - roughly between 600 CE & 1000 CE. There are several nuggets of wisdom that Kanisetti unearths from his research such as, available historical & archaeological evidences from the period were likely subjectively created by elite and privileged people of that age & kings and their coterie that ran kingdoms had a rather sophisticated structure to maintain necessary delineation between royals and commoners by leveraging religious rituals & many more. The most valuable contribution made by the book, however, is the way it elucidates crucial, relevant, societal constructs as they prevailed at the time - Religion & Rituals, Language & Literature, Economy & Trade, Art & Construction, Cultural Epicenters, Warfare, Invader Culture & Rivalry, Contemporary Global Events. On abosrbing Kanisetti’s thesis fully, it becomes clear that the medieval deccan was a far more practical and complex time than what vested interests, especially political entities, would have us believe today.

RELIGIOUS rituals were at the heart of how all the prominent dynasties sustained their social structures. Every king decidedly made his religious allegiance public through pomp & propaganda, but said allegiance would also shift as needed to align with popular sentiments of the time. Ritualistic spectacles, seemingly remnants of the Gupta empire imported from the north, such as Ashvamedha & Hiranyagarbha as well as locally invented ones such as ShivaMandalaDeeksha were employed to achieve elevation into kinghood & to establish perceptible superiority over a multi-layered social structure of vassals, merchants, warlords & commoners. Seen from 4th century to the 7th century CE, religion was an evolving consruct where Buddhism and Jainism were early upstarts closer to 4th century CE & Vedic Hinduism defined by esoteric rituals being the incumbent. Then, Puranic Hinduism centered around Vishnu came along to challenge the Buddhists and Jains. Shaivism came next, led irreverently by poets & rebels, to much consternation from Buddhists, Jains & Vaishnavas alike. With the Shaiva sect of Pashupatas believed to have travelled as far as Cambodia, Shaivism eventually won widepsread & persistent royal patronage with Jainism managing to survive while Buddhism was practically wiped out except for small pockets in the Deccan & Sri Lanka. Whatever religion they patronised though, (Jainism, Vaishnavism & Shaivism were most prominent) kings seemed to follow a recurring template of casting themselves as holy incarnations of the God of the time put on the earth to safeguard the good people of the land. This core idea of the king being a savior of the people and an enforcer of royal Dharma was manifested physically through construction of awe-inspiring temple complexes (Dashaavataara caves at Ellora, Lokeshvara at Pattadkal, Kailasanaatha or Krishneshvara at Ellora, Brihadeeshvara at Thanjavur) as well as commissioning of textured, linguistically sophisticated & sometimes even ironic literary treatises (Dashakumaracharita, Kavirajamaarga, Yashastilaka, Mattavilasa Prahasana, Vikramaarjunavijaya, Saahasabheemavijaya). Construction of temples by these dynasties inextricably shaped cultural epicenters of the period, with Pattadkal, Mamallapuram & Ellora emerging as the most prominent ones - Ellora in particular is staggering in it’s historical presence & had already imbibed Buddhism & Jainism by 4th century CE long before the arrival of royal patrons of Hinduism. Every one of these places is archaeologically significant today & was a thriving conflation of travellers, traders, priests & commoners, fostering art and literature worthy of chronicles by every foreign visitor of repute. There are also instances of these prominent religions cross-pollinating to evolve with the times - around 800 CE for instance, Jainism had imbibed aspects in practice and temple construction from Shaivism as evidenced by the Gommateshvara & Maatanga idols in present day Shravanabelagola & Ellora respectively & best exemplified by the vassal dynasty of the Gangas who cast the king in the image of a powerful Jina. Religious plurality and tolerance were prevalent & have multiple evidences to the effect, inconvenience to present day politically motivated ideologies notwithstanding - the rise of oceanic trade & commerce very likely resulted in examples such as Sanjan, Gujarat where inscriptions and excavations indicate a flourishing trade hub ruled by a Rashtrakuta appointed governor of muslim origin.

HISTORICAL narratives that have been in popular discourse through most of post-independent India have largely ignored this fascinating evolution of the Deccan landscape though. North Indian kings like Chandragupta and Asoka & their ministers such as the consistently popular Chanakya dominate popular consciousness & even mythological epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are contemporarily rooted either in North Indian landscape or North Indian perpsectives. Kanisetti only spans the middle portion of medieval Deccan history in this book, surprisingly enough, sandwiched between the Kadambas and the Hoysalas, Pandyas and the great Vijayanagara kingdom. Fortune favored the bold and unflinching repeatedly, with warlords, vassals and even agriculturists managing to become kings - royalty was seldom grandfathered in and often hard-fought. Any king who attained enough privilge to leave behind hagiographical evidence never shied away from political strategy & decimation of opponents, their art & their societies. The belligerent Cholas left behind self-adulatory inscriptions taking credit for separating appendages from the bodies of rivals & went as far as burning hundreds of merchant ships on multiple occassions with their unflinching expansionary tactics targeted not only towards the north (Gangaikondacholapuram, the name of one of their epicenters, literally means the ‘City of the Chola who brought home the Ganga’) but also offshore towards Java & Sumatra in South-East Asia, which happens to be the only instance of Deccan kings engaging in naval warfare. These were violent, ambitious, complex individuals whose religious, economic & political affiliations were as fluid as the rivers that gave birth to their dynasties & any attemps at force-fitting them into modern day political and ideological narratives is opportunistic at best and downright insulting at worst. The cultures they invented uninhibitively borrowed from and contributed to several religions and languages, with the ultimate goal being administration of their perceived territories as they saw best. What we ought to be doing is soak in their ambition & might writ large across the landscape in multiple forms, & contemplate how to adopt their plurality, realism, & decidedly glocal mindsets for the enhancement of our own social structures and polities.