Marxist Historians of China: Lessons for Bharat
In modern discourse in Bharat, we tend to hear the phrase “Marxist Historian” a lot. What does it usually mean? Where does the term come from?
Many people tend to think it merely means a “leftist historian”, or club them into the same as Orientalist historians. They also think the phenomenon restricts itself to Bharat, when it is actually global.
In this article, we will discuss how the “Marxist Historian” is a term with global application, it’s shortcomings and merits, if any.
Marxism Originally
Marxism believed that all humans were equal in the Early Human stage — hence calling it the “Commune” stage. They also believed that post-industrialization there would be a return to this commune stage — a “End of History” of sorts. This “End of History” perspective is very common in Western and Islamic discourse where their belief system is informed by some imagination of a “Doomsday” which never comes. This leads the world to either a “Happily Ever After” or an “Eternal Doom”. The idea of the “end Commune stage” falls in the same category. The final Commune stage is the “Happily Ever After”.
The Eastern philosophies, on the other hand, believe in an endless cycle of Karma, of repeated cycles of birth and death. Hence, they are less prone to the “end of history” fallacy. Satyug comes again after Kalyug. Rebirth comes after death. Every generation has its own conflicts. There are endless cycles of everything. We have to deal with them as and when they come to us.
It is also an assumption that humans were equal in the “Early Commune Stage”. The theory has been disproved today, as society was divided according to physical strength and intelligence. Three classes of humans existed; their DNAs can still be traced back to us today.
Still, we should keep in mind how this particular perspective, whether true or false, informs the worldview of the Marxist Historians globally.
Marxist Historians of the USSR
The first book titled “Marxist Historian” was by the Soviets. In it, they made the case that older structures of society, mainly feudal structures, were not applicable to the present day anymore. As such, they had tried to re-imagine a “bolshevik” or “majoritarian” state where everyone was equal. They underplayed ethnic and racial identity, much like how the Church in Russia had done so before them. They made a “bolshevik” or majority identity which transcended the racial identity.
While “transcending race” alone may sound like a great idea on paper, the history of this is rooted In colonialism. The Russian empire started expanding alongside the Portuguese and Spanish Empires, in competition. Hence, there are many “Princely States” within Russia, East of the Ural Mountains. This need to “re-imagine" them as Christian only came after the Church unified all these people through coercion and conversion. The Communists only replaced the “Christian” identity with a “Bolshevik” identity to continue holding on to the Imperial Czar Empire, that they so passionately opposed, had created.
To rebrand all subjects of the Czar under one common “Bolshevik” identity was a goal that bore fruits in Russia of today. It is still united for the most part today, it’s resources still exploited, long after Portugal, Russia, Britain, France and others have lost their empires.
Marxist Historians of China
Similarly, Marxist Historians of China follow this model. The Chinese have manufactured a “Chinese” identity under the communist state. While the word “Chinese” was merely a word that the Anglos used for the Han people, the Han of the CCP decided to use it in a whole new context.
Inheriting the empire from the ROC, which itself inherited the empire from the Qing Dynasty, people forget that the Qing were not Chinese at all. Rather, they were Manchurian. Most people don’t even know of a country named “Manchuria” that used to exist north of Korea — half of it lies in China and half of it lies in Russia today. In fact, the Japanese occupation of China started from Manchuria itself and the country was made a base of operation for the Japanese.
The Manchus had taken this country from the Mongols. While Han people had established their rule a few times after Kublai’s rule, like the Song empire, the Manchus and Mongols ruled over China for long. It is wrong to say that the empires established by them are “Chinese” empires in the literal sense, simply because they adopted some Chinese characteristics. It doesn’t change the history of humiliation for the Han Chinese in all these years.
The people of Mongolia have a lot of pride and a separate identity for themselves. Yet, when you ask Chinese people, they will often say ignorant things such as “The only Chinese Dynasty to conquer Europe is the Mongolian dynasty!”. The Mongol history of the conquest of Europe or Central Asia or Persia belongs to the Mongols alone. Yet, it is used by the Chinese Marxist Historians to invoke a false sense of control and trade over this region.
The roots of such re-imagination are directly in the Marxist literature we discussed above. While it may give the conquered people some fake solace, they are still feeding themselves a lie. Han people are better off admitting that their Years of Humiliation are probably more than 100, and healing civilizational wounds with their Mongol, Manchu and Tibetan neighbours. It would prevent the colonized Mongol, Manchu and Tibetan people from developing ill will towards the Han in the future — a sentiment understandably increasing every generation within the PRC.
Indic thinkers like Rajiv Malhotra must be careful when calling the Chinese guys “nationalistic” when comparing them to Bharat — they must understand their nationalism is no better than the “Ganga Jamuna Tehsib”; their militancy in psuedo-nationalism exists only because their narratives have no opposition.
Honesty for Han people, and justice for the non-Han people’s perspectives in history, still remains unrecognised.
Marxist Historians of Bharat
Finally, we come to the Marxist Historians of Bharat. While a lot of work has been done to label and highlight their distortions in the last 5 years — can we use the other two countries as examples to determine where their perspective is coming from?
Where did the Marxist Historian arrive at the conclusion that the “Mughals”, the “Turks”, the “British”, etc are Indian and went through “Indianization”?
The answer lies in the pattern of the other two countries.
The Marxist Historian saw the Uzbekistanis and the Turkmenis as Indian precisely because they wanted to create a “unified” “syncretic” identity of history that transcends the feudal or the regional. It did not matter who was the oppressor and who was the oppressed. A falsification of history to hold on to Undivided India was for the “greater good”.
The issue with this, especially in a country like Bharat, which has celebrated Diversity for centuries and millenniums continuously, is that a “strong” unified identity is one that the people will always be allergic towards.
China itself, once, had many states with a high regional diversity. A “Pradesh” model may help them revive this regional diversity between the Chinese subcultures (a concept very different from the Balkanization the West wants to push onto China).
But back to the Diversity question, we cannot have a unified identity due to our individualistic character within our civilization. People in Bharat are first proud of their jati or gotra, then they are proud of their language, then their sampradaya, then finally their nation. The pluralist nature does not come from a conformist view of society — it comes from free expression and mutual appreciation for each other. From Unity and Diversity.
China already lost some of its diversity to communism, just like we did to Islamisation. But it isn’t too late to change.
A diverse society is not feudal; it is rather empowering in a diverse country to have a smaller identity to fall back upon.
Of course, we could do with smaller states which represent this identity more sharply - something Gautam Desiraju has pointed out to us in his book Bharat: India 2.0.
This would help consolidate our own identity in a federal and individualistic manner, and this “parts of a whole” approach can then help strengthen the national and civilizational identity.
Conclusion
In China, there has been a generation-to-generation angst that has developed since the time of Mao. The first generation under Mao was suffering from the lack of money. This changed under Deng — who opened up the market. But when students protested for Democracy (a part of it was to express their sub-cultural identities within China as well) the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 happened. Now under Mao, they are able to get some sense of identity expression but individualistic impression is clamped down upon. A lip service to culture is paid by the Xi dispensation.
The root of all this is the notion that we will achieve a world without identity some day. We won’t. A kinder world can only come from mutual respect, ie “Unity and Diversity “
We should all work on reviving and shaping our identities, from ancient times to modern day, for preserving the global diversity order. Older civilizations like the Native Turtle Islanders, African animists (a very diverse group), Arab Mushrikun Pagans, the Germanic Pagans all can build a civilizational identity by studying their history “from beginning to end” and incorporating all of it within their lives. These cultures became the root of proselytising religions, the first Being Buddhism that came from Sanatan Dharm.
True unity in the world won’t come when we “transcend identity” as a whole. That notion is Abrahamic in nature. It is no different from the concept of the “civilized world”, or “the kingdom of God”, or “Dar ul Islam”. True peace and unity can only come if we all respect the diversity of our own past as well as the diversity of the globe. Appreciating each other’s diversity is how we can achieve this.
We have to preserve the diversity of the globe, and revive that which is lost so far.
