This lecture was delivered at the Idea of Belonging Conference held in Calcutta in August, 2024

Good Morning. Thank you for that generous introduction. Let me begin by thanking Megha and the History for Peace Team for inviting me to their Annual Conference this year.

The Conference rightly focuses on India and our contemporary dilemmas of coming to terms with challenges thrown before us in defining and co-existing in the midst of our multiple identities. I of course work on very early periods of Indian History. I shall reflect on this past while making it relevant to the theme of the Conference.

It would, however, NOT be rhetorical to ask the question as to why, as we move into the twenty-first century, we need to have a Conference on ‘The Idea of Belonging’. The challenges of this century in recent years have thrown before us new patterns of wars and violence and of urban unrests between communities all related to failing societal cohesion and the lack of integration of marginalized groups and identities that has become visible all over the globe.  Migration, loss of home, attempts to re-define a new sense of belonging has led to extreme developments such as the construction of walls, barbed wires around urban settlements, ‘gating’ of societies with security agencies and so on. These, ironically, are meant to protect oneself from people within our own territorial boundaries. Furthermore, in many cases citizens of a nation-state do not necessarily share the same ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural identity. In fact, there is an increasing tendency towards [what is called] ‘identity plurality’ in many nation states resulting in a ‘relativization’ of identities in new areas of habitation. In Europe for instance, recent migrations have occurred from countries with dictatorial regimes or from war-torn countries. Largely these migrations were to democratically organized countries where their sense of belonging came to be complicit with the way they defined their identities. While this process initially was seen as a source of liberation and survival, the assertion of one’s own proper identity emerges as the real enemy and threat and therefore, the idea of belonging in this new terrain ultimately becomes a struggle for survival.

This above paraphrasing of a complex socio-political and economic situation in our contemporary times, raises fundamental questions for us to probe deeper into what then is the ‘Other’ and what is ‘one-Self’?  Could we find answers to this in our own historical experiences of living in a cultural domain on the Indian subcontinent marked as it was by plural identities co-existing for centuries? OR, were the underlying tensions of this co-existence in the past of a different kind? The reason why there is no straightforward answer to this question is primarily because identity formations in a society like ours was implicated in a hierarchical structure while surrounded by a deep diversity from very early times.

At the outset it must be made clear that this kind of traditional society provided the individual with vertically pre-determined dimensions of identity––language, ethnicity, faith, living space, profession, etcetera, creating a society cohesion by obedience. This can be contrasted with societal structures in modern times as the nation-state introduces new commands and obedience structures that tend to create compartments of communities competing with each other.

To press this distinction further, it is perhaps important to emphatically state that when focusing on early India we must necessarily deal with a civilizational entity and not overlap it with the nation state that we are familiar with in the present. Distinct groups, through distinct societal processes evolve over a long period to make a civilization that provides a consciousness of the necessity for groups to live together within a framework having a distinct way of understanding and dealing with its particular world. As Robert Cox aptly puts it: How people related to each other and how they confronted outsiders for ‘foreigners’ was determined by developments in the evolving collective consciousness.¹

Language, habitation, origin myths, belief systems as an ideology became the first elements that distinguished one group’s rationality from that of the other’s to consolidate one’s identity in the civilizing process. It is important to recognize then and Walther Lichem’s words echo well in the context of my discussion, namely, ‘The issue of identity has become a central element in the search for belonging and community’.²

I outline my submission in four broad sections. The narrative to follow is largely based on literary texts that at best provide us only perceptions and representations of the ancient society that historians then need to deliberate upon to identify the broad contours of the possible lived experience of people in the past.

(1) Belonging in Linguistic spaces: Initial differentiation of Otherness

(2) Belonging in Territorial spaces: Ongoing flexible Habitation formations

(3) Belonging and Social Identities: Expansion of Ideology of Hierarchy

(4) Belonging and Naming: Historical contexts nurturing new elements

On ‘Otherness’: Belonging in Linguistic Spaces

All human beings live with a certain degree of self-determination and are ‘different’ from the ‘other’. Simply put, the concept of otherness originally related to an enemy usually on the other side of the border of a space inhabited by the Self. However, multi-dimensional patterns of interaction over time, (through language of course) always brings otherness into the intimate presence of the Self, requiring a fundamental restructuring of value patterns. This interaction with otherness was originally perceived as a loss of ‘Self’-identity. Nonetheless, it surely did become the source for the development of a new identity. Viewed in this way otherness may very well be the saviour, the source of liberation and survival; while a person’s own proper identity may be the real enemy and threat constantly struggling to save itself. In extreme cases threat to one’s own identity often leads to xenophobia and generates hatred, rejection and violent conflicts.

Language was central to identity in ancient India and first defined otherness in terms of linguistic exclusiveness as evidenced by the importance given to uphold the proper pronunciation of Sanskrit words in the earliest extant texts. There was Vach and Bhasha⸺both emphasizing how people defined their sense of identity and belonging.³ In the case of the former the earliest texts warn against the mis-pronunciation of words as that would lead to the downfall of people and their defeat. The most significant verse in this regard is in the Shatapatha Brahmana equating certain words (he’laya he’layo) as a mispronunciation (of he’ ari, he’ ari). Those that misarticulated these words were labelled as barbarians or mlecchas and were thus destroyed because of this loss.⁴ In fact, many references allude to language as a criterion that defined mleccha status (either the inability to use Sanskrit, or the inability to use it correctly). If they did NOT belong to the Sanskritic world, where did they belong? Some scholars have suggested that it was the inability of these people to pronounce certain sounds like ‘r’ ‘ks’ etc. and therefore could allude to speakers of various Prakrits,⁵ spoken by a large majority of the people. The process of ensuring the sanctity of the proper articulation of Sanskrit as the language of the elite was something that grammarians from Panini onwards continued to emphasize. In fact, Patanjali gives specific instructions to brahamanas to avoid the mleccha speech.

Different from speech there was the issue of language (bhasha). In the Rig Veda there is allusion to people whose language is unintelligible (mridhravach). Innumerable languages across the sub-continent came into contact with the Sanskritic tradition and, as Thomas Burrow⁶ has shown, there were many loan words in Sanskrit from these languages. From the early centuries CE onwards texts like the Natyashastra begin to define a hierarchy of languages.⁷ 

However, it is in the commentaries of the Buddhagosha (fifth century CE) on early Buddhist texts that we have mention of specific bhashas (languages) as milakkha or barbarian. In the Samantapasadika, Buddhaghosa, has explained that the milakkhas (Prakrit of mleccha) were anariya people like the Andha, Damila. and so on. In the Manorathapuraṇi, the Damila, Yavana and other languages have been listed as milakkha bhashas.⁸ These allude primarily to languages of the people of the Far South, alongside mention of the Yavana or Greek language. While the Brahmanic and Buddhist traditions speak of these languages from their respective cultural perspectives, we are fundamentally aware from the inscriptions that many of these languages had their own cultural and political significance that defined the speakers who used them. For the early centuries CE we have the unique Tamil Brahmi inscriptions that indicate a north Indian script but using the Tamil language. Further, it was common to use different scripts and languages in north western India which have been studied by several scholars. Could we consider these as defining transitional categories of belonging?

In the texts of course, the ‘other' apparently does NOT exhibit any agency. Their actions, behavior and norms were creations of the people who wrote about them. In fact, these allusions entirely talk about the ideals, aspirations and sense of identity of the Brahmins.  For instance, in the Puranas it is the brahmanas of the Gupta period who write about the dawn of the Kali Age that would create doom as it would be dominated by the ‘other’ called mlecchas (barbarians).⁹ The concern being articulated here was the objectives and anxieties of the dominant Self and this necessitated the creation of the 'other'.

It is well known that in ancient India there were continuous invasions and migrations into north India––the Greeks (Yavanas), Scythians (Sakas), Kushans (Tukaharas) and Huns (Hunas). They brought with them their own languages though in the early Indian texts they are noted as the preeminent mlecchas.  Their coins and inscriptions reveal another reality. A variety of distinct languages and scripts are used. At the same time, they grew to be bilingual, indicating that they had implanted themselves with confidence in the new lands that they had come to occupy. Their new sense of belonging is best exemplified in the case of the Western Kshatrapa (Saka) rulers who became supporters of Brahmanical institutions, aspired to Indian ideals such as being Chakravartins and stood at the fore-front of paying respect to brahmanas and so on.  Yet, the Western Kshatrapas are usually thought of as a foreign dynasty, in contrast to the 'Indian' Satavahanas, but the former were the first ones who inscribed a Sanskrit inscription––that of Rudradaman. Both the dynasties in their inscriptions gave cows and villages to brahmanas in turn for services they provided to them.¹⁰  Foreign or not, these groups adjusted to social order and created their own sense of belonging leading to the flowering of various regional traditions over historical time.

There is indeed complexity in the long-term evolution of a civilizational perspective, but what cannot be ignored is that negotiating difference with the ‘Other’ has to be seen in a continuous mode of operation defining new identities as well as their sense of belonging, often in particular niches of habitation, which we turn to examine next.

Belonging and Territorial Spaces

‘India’ and particular parts of it, during early phases of her history were referred to by various names depending on the source being used. The earliest extant texts speak of Saptasindhu––the land of the Indus and its tributaries––the name India in fact alluding to people living on the other side of the river Indus as mentioned in early Greek sources and by Alberuni as well. The geographical connotation of the subcontinent is addressed by the term, Bharatavarsha (land of Bharatas), which draws on the name of a prominent kin/ lineage group, the Bharatas, mentioned in several texts as occupying the western Ganga valley and who often fought and/or collaborated with other kin groups like the Kuru, Panchalas, Purus etc. More prolifically, as a composite term Bharatavarsha occurs in the Puranas from the third century CE onwards primarily to define the geographical markers of this territory. Interestingly, Yavanas (alluding to ancient Greeks) and Kiratas (a well-known Tibeto Mongoloid group) were mlecchas who inhabited its western and eastern extremities respectively.¹¹  However, a significant mention in the form Bharadhavasa first occurs in the Hathigumpha inscription of king Kharavela in Odisha alluding to a general spatial entity from the Himalayas in the north and the oceans to its east and west up to its southern tip. As part of Jambudvipa, its cosmological significance is evident from an etching found in Jaina caves of the early centuries CE at Konakondala in the Vajrakarur taluk of Anantapar district in Andhra Pradesh. Sabara in the fifth century CE, in his Bhashya on the Purvamimamsa Sutras of Jaimini suggests that there was a unity of language and culture in Bharatavarsha.  Thus, as a notion it was shared across regions and faiths. A comfortable knowledge of this space remained intact in subsequent allusions to it being a civilizational whole generating a sense of belonging to this land in ideational terms.

However, belonging of particular populations was alluded to in different types of ancient texts (Brahmanical, Buddhist, Jaina and Tamil) through terms like Janapada/Mahajanapada, Aryavarta, Madhyadesha, Mahajimadesha, Tamilakam and so on.  The nature of belonging to these entities was of course determined by different criteria in each case Janas or communities became solidified as occupying specific land with political boundaries in the mention of janapadas/mahajanapadas well-articulated in the early Buddhist texts, highlighting the belonging of peoples in these locally defined specified spaces as for example of the Kuru-Panchalas, the Kosalas, the Kasis, the Matsyas and many others. Those in the hilly tracts were decidedly different and had a gana-sangha form of socio-political organization.

Aryavarta, it is important to emphasize, referred to cultural boundaries that kept changing, ultimately firming up as the space where the best form of the varna system would prevail. Therefore, those not part of this system were relegated to inhabiting what was called Mlecchadesha or the land of the barbarians.  These lands belonged to the autochthonous inhabitants of the subcontinent who occupied forests and mountains as large swaths of landscapes loosely designated in this derogatory fashion. There was interaction between the pastoral, agrarian and urban landscapes in different historical contexts and thus we get flexible boundaries and definitions of borderlands.

One cannot overlook the fact that sectarian differences did emerge and both the Jainas and Buddhists as the earliest ideologies contesting Brahmanism defined their sense of belonging to a cultural area called Majjhimadesha where people were cultured and understood their sense of belonging to new ideas that these faiths propagated. Lands beyond these were considered pratyanta, or border janapadas, where lived the ignorant or barbaric people (milakkhas). Much later, around the fifth century CE, both the Jaina and Buddhist commentaries specified the exact nature of these groups These are not very different from the lists we find in the Puranas as in giving us names of such groups as the Saka (Shaka), Javaṇa (Yavana), Sabara (Shabara), Babvara (Barbara), Aṁdha (Andhra), Davila (Draviḍa), Billala (Bilavala), Pulimda (Pulindra), Ciṇa (Cina), Kuhana (Kushana), Huṇa (Huṇa), Romaga (Romaka) and many others who were different from what the ariyas or the noble people––the Prajnapana defined twenty-four-and-a-half countries as inhabited by the ariya and a large majority of them—thirty-two-and-a-half countries inhabited by the milakkha or barbarian people.¹²

The Far South being conspicuously excluded in these north based texts had its own traditions of defining its civilizational boundaries through the term Tamilakam with its northern limit being the Venakatam hills. Within this space were described five tinai or ecological entities, each inhabited by peoples pursuing a different mode of subsistence—kurinji, mullai, palai, marutam and neythal. People living to the north were considered the ‘other’ and called Vadavaras (Vattanattinars). The Yavanas too were conspicuously outsiders who had traveled to the Malabar coast for trading in pepper and other spices. A sense of belonging in political terms was articulated through the mention of the Muvendar or three major chiefs of the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas. Their later historical trajectory defined more specifically their geographical and politico-ethnic affiliations with deep history that went into the making of specific linguistic and social regions with sectarian affiliations that changed from time to time.¹³

It is clear that the geographical knowledge of the sub-continent had considerably increased in all types of texts and upholding the tradition in its fluidity served the purpose of a continual rejuvenation and transformation of regions, hitherto considered excluded. But the tendency to list countries/ regions inhabited by the people of mixed origin (samkirnajatis) did not disappear. Questions of exclusion and impurity were central to defining the solidity and protection of the hierarchical order of the times. It is our submission that a sense of belonging first and foremost was to one’s position in this hierarchical set-up that we turn to discuss next. Language and areas of habitation became secondary to defining the ‘other’.

Ideology—Belonging and Social Identities

Early India as we have seen thus far was marked with multiple identities—ethnic, linguistic, religious––but those around ‘caste’ give us the best examples of how identity formation and belonging was encrusted into the social fabric of India. A classificatory system in the early Vedic texts around the foundational thought and idea of dharma defined hierarchy originally based on the natural order. Brian Smith writes: a perpetual reaffirmation of the truth of varna, a classificatory system […] not only guides such basic perceptions as that of space and time but also that of social relations and hierarchy.¹⁴  All social groups had to respond to this relationship as important components highlighting differences and their sense of belonging to the Order. This was usually done in local and regional contexts. In other words, the generality of what constituted the essence of the civilizational entity was continually juxtaposed with particularities of specific interactions, which I must hastily add was not bereft of political or economic agency that communities in diverse linguistic and ethnic localities exerted.

The ideological construct called dharma was in a continual state of evolution within structures of power that emphasized notions of belonging in the human world (and I may add to the non-human world). It also implicated related notions of justice, truth, violence and other such values. Thus, the social existence of the everyday was structured on the rule boundedness of Indian society as repeatedly endorsed in the Dharmashastra texts and their commentaries. Just as the natural order was difficult to destroy, the broad framework of a hierarchical social system was never replaced and so there was no option but to be continually interacting and negotiating with it. This can be contrasted to the tolerant and flexible attitudes towards people pursuing different religious faith.

The formation of varnas and jatis was critically linked to the existence of the outcast (impure castes) and outsiders (foreigners) as representing subordination and marginality respectively. I can elaborate further on this issue. The former were undoubtedly oppressed and their histories were entwined in complex ways to the trajectory of power and domination in early India––such groups were made economically dependent and their segregation ensured through ritually isolation were labelled as the antayas and asprishyas. These overarching labels were rarely used but those who belonged to these groups were well-known jatis like the chandalas, charmakaras, rajakas, pukkusas, svapakas and many others on whom the rules of purity and pollution were effectively used to make this a defining characteristic of the varna-jati system. They were thus necessarily part of the caste system but always on its margins.¹⁵

On the other hand were a variety of outsiders labeled as mlecchas who came into contact with the mainstream caste society but were initially defined as being excluded from the dominant perception of the Self and regarded as uncivilized. It is noteworthy here to mention that their notional origin is not described from the Cosmic Being or Mahapurusha but through unusual ways to rationalize on their existence in society as for instance in one case of the birth of the early foreigners like the Yavanas, Pahlavas, Tusharas, Sakas etc. being born out of Nandini, the magical cow of sage Vashistha, a Brahmana who used them to defeat sage Vishwamitra, a Kshatriya. They were categorically considered culturally inferior though not always oppressed or permanently excluded. Over time, some came to be accommodated as both dominant and subordinate castes and thus there was a dynamic sense of their belonging in the social landscape of the subcontinent that included a wide variety of forest tribes and peoples.¹⁶

Naming in this view of social engineering gives us multiple nodes of social exclusion, each in turn, throwing up a series of other names apparently synonymous to each other, yet different in their localization in time and space. They flower out from a strong linear stem that allows us to map the complex relationship between hierarchy and diversity in the social landscape of the subcontinent. The excluded were perceived to have been generating deviance in many ways and since they existed in society, they were a continual challenge to stability. It was ultimately ensured that such groups responded to a number of names/designations that were necessarily type cast and prearranged in a certain order. Dr B. R. Ambedkar (in 1936, addressing the Mahar conference) had recognized that names, thus given, stuck. This resulted in pigeonholing populations into names which did not align with their own self-perception. He articulated:

There is no meaning in adopting a name like Chokhamelā or Harijan. The stench of the old name will stick to the new and you will be forced to change your name continually. Then why not change it permanently?17

To move away from the above process of naming one had to opt out of the system and adopt an alternative naming pattern that was relatively more inclusive that I must now reflect on.

Naming And Belonging––The Socioeconomic Space

Belonging was never defined by assigning a proper name to the outcast or the outsider in different types of Brahmanical texts. This can be differentiated with the Buddhist’s concern of using proper names both in their texts as well as inscriptions. In the Buddhist context individual identity was not always subsumed in caste or ethnic identity. Naming by proper name became critical to a new ethos in creating an alternative society, that of the sangha. Uma Chakravarti in her book on Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 1987) based on her research tabulates how early Buddhist literature throws up proper names for both uccha kulas (upper class families) and the nicha kulas (low-class families).¹⁸ Thus, we have examples of such names as Arittha, the vulture trainer, Chitta, son of an elephant trainer, Punna and Punnika who were slave girls and so on.¹⁹ The same goes with names of outcast communities like Sunita who was a pukkusa, Talaputa, headman of itinerant actors or natas, Matanga as son of a chandala. Most of these names occur in the context of them joining the Buddhist Order as bhikkhus or bhikkhunis where these individuals acquire a new sense of belonging.

Proper names emerge in large numbers if one peruses through the early inscriptions from various Buddhist sites. This is in the context of donations that were made to the monasteries but here the maximum come primarily from the gahapati families wherein each individual was referred to by her/his proper name along with specifying the kin group and region that they belonged to.²⁰ There are also a handful of examples that can be cited coming from mainly the artisan communities. Of these the gift by Attha, the kamika or labourer from Sanchi and the one from Amaravati by Vidhika, son of teacher (upajhaya) Naga belonging to a ritually impure charmakara jati draw our present attention. This example points to some members of these communities now taking to teaching within the confines of the new intellectual order provided by Buddhism.

In the case of outsiders, sources left behind by the foreigners themselves throw open a wide range of individual proper names that have been studied by earlier scholarship too vast to mention here. On coins, we have proper names of foreigners represented as rulers occupying specific territories. Inscriptional sources tell us about the portrayal of merchants and traders as followers of the Buddhist dhamma or as ardent worshippers of Lord Shiva,. Data from northwest India––the Swat valley, Taxila and so on bear prolific record of such names. From other parts of India too examples can be cited wherein some of them even acquired Indian names like Yonaka Indragnidattha, Dharmadeva, Dharmarakshita etc. Such names reflect their sense of belonging as being Indianized while keeping their identities intact.

People from the subcontinent also traveled westward and into Central Asia. This is amply illustrated by names that have been documented along the Karakorum. Here, noting one’s identity was simply through an individual’s personal name, pertaining to all communities irrespective of caste or creed and following different religious faiths. They thus left their stamp for posterity as individuals––their belonging here as travelers with multiple identities, in new unexplored terrains, away from home and hearth, intermingling with each other, in a land alien to all of them.

From the eighth century CE onwards, invaders and traders to the Indian subcontinent from West Asia and Central Asia brought with them a new religion, namely Islam. The coming of foreigners was not new but burdened by colonial and nationalist historiography some historians have tended to label these newcomers only on the basis of their religion. B. D. Chattopadhyaya writes that it has been argued that Hindus and Muslims were two monoliths, unchanging communities either in ‘irreconcilable hostility’ or ‘showing absolute religious toleration and synthesis.’ These are historiographical interpretations that have to be rejected since evidence from the ancient sources has to be seen in terms of  ‘representations within the broad cultural-ideological parameters of early Indian society’.²¹ Diverse communities came to subcontinent and their affiliation was to particular ethnicities such as Tajikas, Turushkas, Parasikas and so on.  O’Connell and Thapar point out that use of the term 'Mussalaman' or 'Muslim' was not an immediate entrant into the vocabulary of Indian languages after the arrival of Islam to the subcontinent.²² Similarly, the term 'Hindu' as referring to a single monolith religion is initially absent in the vocabulary of Indian languages. In fact, the self-perception of the Hindus, as elaborately discussed by Thapar, was through a variety of terms––in the Dharmashastra as the arya and in the sectarian Puranas through a variety of terms like Shaivite, Vaishnavite, Shakta, Tantric and so on.²³ 

As the new political entrants,²⁴ the Arabs, Turks, Afghans and others came to be referred to variously as the Yavanas, Sakas, Mleccha etc. in the religious discourses of the time²⁵ as had been done for the earlier set of invaders defining their theoretical exclusion. A closer look at the terminology used was indicative of subtle and complex relationships that the society of the times had with each other as described by the authors of the texts and inscriptions. The tendency to negotiate with such groups in regional and local contextual situations continued. Historical data between the seventh to the fourteenth century CE throws up contradictory images, of both 'inclusivity and exclusivity'.²⁶  For instance, the destruction of brahmana agraharas in the Vilasa Grant graphically describes the calamity that followed the Muslim occupation of the Andhra kingdom. This is detailed not only in political terms but also in terms of the Turushkas (Muslims) as the destroyers of the existing social order. Cynthia Talbot points out that was one aspect of the empirical reality but soon there was reconciliation with the invader. The Kakatiyas who were overthrown by the Turushkas (Muslims) collaborated with them and joined their forces to invade the Pandya kingdom of the Far South.²⁷ Difference is upheld in conflict and in collaboration. Was collaboration and conflict apparent in this domain too? An example of the former from western India was the construction of a mosque by a Commander of a ship called Noradina Piroja/Nuruddin Firuz with the help of local residents. The mosque or mijigiti in the record, written in both Sanskrit and Arabic.²⁸ 

The category of Mleccha/Yavana/Muslim at times reached out to accommodate ONLY individuals primarily because of the necessities of ‘practical life’. However, within the larger processes of negotiation attempts at the legitimization of political authority went on hand in hand with the device of initially distancing the 'Other' from the 'Self'.  The perpetual existence of Mlecchas as a theoretical category continued to exist and be applied to new sets of outsiders over historical time.²⁹

Reflections And Our Contemporary Dilemmas

This straddling between a meaningful sense of the ‘Self’ belonging to a civilizational ethos and the multiple ‘others’ constantly impinging on its inner core gives us a changing sense of belonging in time and space across the Indian subcontinent to make the fundamental point that the making of identities was emphatically central to defining our sense of belonging within a larger notion of being ’Indian’. Hitherto the ‘ancient source’ has not been problematized appropriately since the modern history of the nation state largely uses it to legitimize contemporary positions of authority and control to generalize and monolithize ‘being Indian’.³⁰  This has also led to generalizations that then essentializes pre-modern India simply in cultural and philosophical terms as a harmonious, cohesive society without discord.

On the contrary the rule-boundedness of ancient Indian society was a hierarchical structure with inequality built into it and labeling people by their caste and ethnic identities the norm.  In fact, as argued above, the use of proper names was possible only when one opted out of the system or if one was powerful enough to inscribe one’s own names for posterity.

With reference to marginalized groups today scholars working on the colonial period point to the emergence of the term ‘untouchable’ as a modern construction which had both a positive and a negative impact. It was both an interpretation of the past and the basis for affirmative action in the present. This remains in contemporary India the critical site for identity formation, politics and the writing of history. The modern search for a single overarching term exemplified in the use of Untouchable, Outcast, Depressed classes in the colonial context were replaced by terms like Harijan, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes around independence. Today Dalit, Bahujana, Dalitbahujan encompass all the oppressed to bring under their umbrella a very large segment of the exploited people in Indian society. Our identities are in fact the conjuncture of our past with the social, cultural and economic relations we live within which we must cognize in context of our overall discussion. The one single problem with the modern use of the above overarching terminologies is that it tends to blank out the existing hierarchies among the Dalit groups themselves. Even issues of claiming rights under affirmative action gets limited. Thus, what needs to be studied now are the differences in the way local groups and communities of people, identifying and naming themselves as members of particular castes within villages and other larger units, are placed economically, socially, culturally and politically. The way textual traditions of early India had articulated the process of naming has become part of social memory and cultural practice, which has not totally been erased from the collective psyche even today.

In the case of the outsiders while elaborating on diversity and difference, the nature of socio-cultural exclusion of the ‘Other’ in early India was accompanied by incorporation and accommodation. We must emphasize here that this should not be confused with tolerance. This was accompanied by a continual and dynamic change of the collective ’Self’, modulated and structured by diverse, multiple and complex conjunctures of negotiation wherein tribal and foreign groups had to adjust to the social order defined by varna ideology. It was precisely this challenge from the ‘Other’ that enabled Indian society to remain culturally vibrant and diverse showcasing multiple ways of belonging so that in this process its cultural identity was not simply ‘BEING’ but continuously ‘BECOMING’.

In multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation-states, like India, modern ways of identity formation often give rigid categorizations.³¹ The nation-state with its commitment to a liberal, secular, democratic society is compelled to handle this diversity especially the protection and the alleviation of minority rights to achieve the ultimate goal of creating a new ‘national identity’. Many minority groups, however, demand their individual uniqueness be recognized and be protected lest they be lost in the surge of homogenization and uniformity.

Ideally the nation state should be dealing with ‘modern communities’ and their sense of belonging to the nation but data in the field shows that ‘modern communities’ are far from formed. As such there are ‘pre-modern’ communities located in the modern nation state who continue to choose ambiguity to define their status as it offers multiple choices. In other words, this view articulates that distinctive identities are continually in a state of formation, a fact that must be recognized and negotiated with from time to time to enable them to live with distinct identities that they have inherited.

In this plurality of ways of belonging the goal of ‘equal dignity’ must go hand in hand with the ‘dignity of difference’. In ultimate analysis, we get different levels of identity formation and visual differences in terms of the various everyday elements of life that individuals and groups were engaged in—be they the way people spoke, prayed, ate, dressed or politically defined themselves. All these do NOT have to collapse into a single identity.  At the same time, it must be recognized that identities are not fixed into cemented conditions but rather fluid and dynamic.

So how is this presentation on pre-modern Indian society's experience in dealing with hierarchy and cultural diversity relevant for us today? It enables us to recognize that maintaining cultural difference as a way of BELONGING was important to the early Indian ethos. It also gives us an insight into looking at how cultural identities on the sub-continent negotiated with each other over space and time. Built as it was on an ideology of inequality, one cannot unproblematically and blindly adopt our inherited past since injustice, violence and imposition get reflected in cultural practices and performances of everyday life even today. History can of course also destroy if we continue to assert its authoritarian trait of using positivism and its reductionist paradigm unabashedly to prove and validate selective historical events for posterity that necessarily foreclose options of interpretation and only remember and highlight the violence of contact between peoples.

Notes and References

1.  Robert W. Cox, ‘Consciousness and Civilization: The Inside Story’, in Mojtaba Mahdavi and W. Andy Knight (eds), Towards the Dignity of Difference? Neither ‘End of History’ nor ‘Clash of Civilizations’ (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2021), pp.101–114; here pp. 103–4.

2.  Walther Lichem,‘Capacity for Otherness in Pluri-Identity Societies’ in Mojtaba Mahdavi and W. Andy Knight (eds), Towards the Dignity of Difference? Neither ‘End of History’ nor ‘Clash of Civilizations’ (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2021), pp. 155–166; here p. 155.

3.  Aloka Parasher Sen, ‘The Power of Speech (Vāc) and the Languages (Bhāṣās) of the ‘Other’ in the Early Indic Context’ Indian Linguistics 77 (1-2) (2016): 21-34.

4.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India, A Study in Attitudes towards Outsiders up to AD 600 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1991 [Reprint Edition 2023]).

5.  Madhav M Deshpande, Sanskrit & Prakrit: Sociolinguistic Issues (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993).

6.  Thomas Burrow, The Sanskrit Language (London: Faber and Faber, 1955. Reprint, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2001).

7.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India.

8.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India.

9.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India.

10.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India.

11.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India.

12.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India.

13.  Upinder Singh, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India (Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008).

14.  Brian K. Smith, Classifying the Universe: The Ancient Indian Varna System and the Origins of Caste (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

15.  Aloka Parasher-Sen, ’Naming and Social Exclusion: The Outcaste and the Outsider’ in Patrick Olivelle (ed.), Between the Empires: Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.  415-455.

16.  Aloka Parasher-Sen, ‘Of Tribes, Hunters and Barbarians: Forest Dwellers in the Mauryan Period’, Studies in History 14 (2) (August 1998): 173–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/025764309801400202.

17.  Aloka Parasher-Sen, ‘’Naming and Social Exclusion’, p. 415.

18.  Uma Chakravarti, Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 198–220.

19.  Uma Chakravarti, Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, pp. 217–220.

20.  Uma Chakravarti, Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, p. 191–7.

21.  B. D. Chattopadhyaya. Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims (New Delhi: Manohar Books, 1998), pp. 79–84.

22.  J. T. O’Connell, ‘Vaishanava Perceptions of Muslims in Sixteenth Century Bengal’, in M. Israel and N. K. Wagle (eds), Islamic Society and Culture (New Delhi: Manohar Books, 1983), pp. 289–313; here 289–290; Romila Thapar, ‘The Tyranny of Labels’ Social Scientist 24 (9-10) (1996): 3–23.

23.  Romila Thapar, ‘The Tyranny of Labels’, pp. 7–14.

24.  Cynthia Talbot, ‘Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(4) (1995): 692–722.

25.  Eleanor Zelliot, ‘A Medieval Encounter between Hindus and Muslims: Ekanath’s Drama-Poem Hindu-Turk Samvad’ in F. W. Clothey (ed.) Images of Man: Religion and Historical Processes in South Asia (Madras: New Era Publications, 1982); J. T. O’Connell, ‘Vaishanava Perceptions of Muslims.’

26.  B. D. Chattopadhyaya, Representing the Other?, pp. 83–84.

27.  Cynthia Talbot, ‘Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self’, p. 702.

28.  B. D. Chattopadhyaya, Representing the Other?, p. 72.

29.  Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India, p. 273.

30.  Pavan K. Varma, Being Indian: The Truth About Why the Twenty-First Century Will be India’s, (Delhi: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 13.

31.  K. N. Chaudhuri, ‘From the Barbarian and the Civilized to the Dialectics of Colour: An Archaeology of Self-identities’, in Peter Robb (ed.) Society and Ideology, Essays in South Asian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp. 22–48; here pp. 22–28.