Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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militant reaction to this blatant political and religious persecution.
This sad aspect of our history is sometimes sought to be explained
on grounds, which may be partially correct but are not wholly tenable.
It is said that the climate of the land and the softening influence of a
civilized way of life enervated the Indians as against the sturdy invading
nomads. But the Rajputs did not loose for lack of valour. This was
acknowledged even by their adverseries. Thousands of Rajputs partook
in Johars. Akbar was so impressed by the valour of Jaimal and Phatta
in defending Chitor that he had their status erected at the most
conspicuous entrance to his palace at Delhi. 9 Muslim invaders were
more than once at the point of losing their Indian battles, and
Muhammad of Ghur was actually defeated in the first battle of Tarori.
Much later, the British rulers of India succeeded in recruiting large
numbers of soldiers during the last two world wars. Another reason
usually mentioned is that the Indians lacked unity. They did lack it,
but their humiliation cannot be ascribed solely to that disunity between
the warring Hindu Lords. Disunity is a common feature of many, if
not all, medieval political systems. Mahmood Ghaznavi had to beat
hasty retreats from India a number of times because his home
principality was threatened or attacked in his absence by his rivals to
power. The prostration of the Indians and their disunity were due to
a more basic cause.
b) Prostration and Caste
The basic cause of India disunity and prostration was the caste
system. The very constitution of the caste system is the anti-thesis of
social cohesion. Social exclusiveness and repulsion between castes or
subs-castes are the very essence of the caste order. Caste ‘grows by
fission’ 10 , and, in this process, went on creating new mutually exclusive
and antagonistic social groups. It was an irony of this system that it
deprived its constituents of ‘unity of purpose’ and rendered them
incapable of ‘unity of action’, and yet it was the only social framework
which held them together. ‘It is likely also that a further political
consequence of the caste system has been to simplify the intrusion of
foreign invaders by opposing to them a society irreparably split up and
unable to combine, a society that has for centuries lacked a national
life, so much so, perhaps, as to justify Bougle’s apophthegm that for