On Power, Memory, and Architecture by Richard Eaton and Philip Wagoner

Raziuddin Aquil

The emotionally charged partisans of Telangana and Seemandhra might like to reflect on the historical experience of the region. Two American historians–Richard Eaton and Philip Wagoner–have offered a path-breaking study of monumental scale for a fascinating new account of political and cultural heritage of medieval Deccan. Eaton is the foremost scholar of South Asian Islam at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Wagoner a fine art historian at Wesleyan University, Middletown. In addition to its significance as a collaborative effort of contemporary topical interest, this richly illustrated magnum opus presents a rigorous analysis of some of the hotly debated themes and issues in Indian history.

The Mughal-centrism in medieval Indian history being a major limitation, the finely crafted work provides a superb corrective by focusing on India’s Deccan Plateau in the relatively neglected period, 1300–1600. Indeed, despite the dominance of northern India in the study of medieval history as in the politics of the present, some of the finest works of recent decades on religious movements, visual cultures, and literary traditions pertaining to the medieval period are spatially located in southern India. The monograph by Eaton and Wagoner excels in effortlessly merging a conventional historian’s archival research, an art historian’s fieldwork for visual data, an archaeologist’s digging into mounds for material evidence of historical value, and a geographer using latest technology to map the specificity of a location to write a history of some otherwise secondary sites (Kalyana, Raichur, and Warangal) of considerable importance in the geopolitics of sixteenth-century Deccan.

The power struggle–especially involving Bijapur, Golconda, and Vijayanagara–witnessed effective deployment of three important nodes–political and historical memory, architectural heritage, and military innovations, particularly the sophisticated new gunpowder technology. The memories and monuments of earlier political achievements of the Chalukyas, including temples, relics, and city-gates, were used by Vijayanagara rulers who clearly identified themselves with an Indic or Sanskritic inheritance, but also adopted Persianate-markers such as distinctive titles and dress. Outsmarting their more resourceful rival, the Deccani Sultans also intelligently transcended the chasm between Perso-Islamic (including Shia-Sunni divide) and the Sanskritic cosmopolis–re-using Kakatiya antiques and yet creating something of their own. The extraordinary careers of Shitab Khan of Warangal, originally a low-caste Telugu warlord Chittapa, and Sultan Quli, coming from Hamadan, the predominantly Turkish-speaking western Iranian province, epitomize the dynamics of the enterprise.

Further, the question of Hindu-Muslim encounter and communal relations remains important here as well. Instead of the simplistic binary of two narrow religions locked in eternal strife, the authors pursue an alternative analytical approach to understand two cosmopolitan cultural systems–Sanskritic and Persian–going beyond religious struggles as we understand in modern times. Thus, the attitude towards places of worship varied, depending upon political contexts, from spectacular theatrics to utter indifference: aggressive desecration, re-assemblage, ritual redefinition, active patronage, or sheer apathy. The most fascinating example is found in a Sanskrit inscription (10 November 1326) of Muhammad bin Tughluq ordering restoration and protection of a Shiva temple at Kalyana; two separate contemporary reports have added gory details of brutal punishment given to the violent vandals in proportion to their crime–the nature and seriousness of which was determined by the so-called maverick Sultan in his own inimitable style.

Apart from memory and architecture, the significance of gunpowder and military technology have also been examined, more generally with reference to the two fateful battles of Raichur (1520) and Talikota (1565). Large-scale military modernization in the intervening period of 45 years between the two battles–developing newer and better guns and designing and building taller bastions or cavaliers–by Muslim Sultanates, especially Bijapur, was in contrast to the complacency of self-assurance, indeed sheer arrogance, of Vijayanagara rulers. Kiss my foot, a confident Krishna Rai had famously demanded from the suppressed Bijapur’s Ismail Adil Khan.

Thus, invoking older imperial memories and re-using architectural remains of cultural value were important tropes in the justification of power, which, in turn, meant occupation and maintenance of forts and cities as well as controlling resources and developing new centres. The foundation of the millennial city of Hyderabad (Hijri 1000/1591-92 CE) for its multi-ethnic elite, but modelled on Warangal and amidst the Telugu-speaking population of Telangana, is a case of crucial import to the current debate on the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. Even though electoral compulsions have now reduced political strategies to just managing vote-banks of different kinds and manipulating numbers of seats, the warring parties should, perhaps, go back to history for some fresh insights and perspectives: Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300–1600 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Previously published it the Sunday Guardian:

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/reflect-on-deccans-history