Revisiting Chola grandeur with eyes wide open

Indian Express

4 days ago

Once again, public discourse is abuzz with the legacies of the Cholas — thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Gangaikonda Cholapuram, their erstwhile capital.
The Cholas occupy a hallowed space in Indian imagination for their pioneering experiments in democracy, but one needs to look beyond their basilica-like monuments, gilded Natarajas and temple vimanas (the towering structure above the inner sanctum) piercing the skylines of Thanjavur, Gangaikonda Cholapuram, and Darasuram.
From an intellectual standpoint, the political rhetoric around the Cholas seems to overshadow the works of historians like K A N Sastri, R C Majumdar, B D Chattopadhyaya, R Champakalakshmi, Ranabir Chakravarti, Y Subbarayalu, Jonathan Heitzman, Hermann Kulke, Tansen Sen, Rakesh Mahalakshmi, Noboru Karashima, Anirudh Kanisetti, etc.
Relatively forgotten by nationalists, the Cholas underwent an image makeover around the 1930s. Kanisetti says Sastri and Majumdar found romanticised examples of enlightened Chola imperialism to counter Britain's pride in its Roman past.
Unsurprisingly, Kalki Krishnamurthy's novel Ponniyin Selvan (1950-54) edified Chola king Rajaraja I as an amalgamation of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and C Rajagopalachari.
While most historians date the Cholas between the 9-13th century, ambitious ones have gone back to the Sangam period (between 350 BC and 1279 AD). In the latter periodisation, the Tamil confederacy was defeated by Kalinga in 155 BC, and re-emerged in 850 AD under Vijayalaya, who, with Pallava approval and Velir solidarity, seized Thanjavur. His grandson Parantaka-I vanquished the Pandyas and Pallavas, before being defeated by the Rashtrakutas. Parantaka's grandson Raja Raja Chola-I and great-grandson Rajendra Chola-I came to personify what made the Chola Empire a subject of unwavering awe — their towering temples, intricate bronzes, maritime prowess and administrative infrastructure.
History enthusiasts are generally captivated by Chola polity's three-tiered system, constituted by nadu (supra-village), ur (village) and brahmadeya (Brahminical agrahara) assemblies, with nagarams (merchant-towns) governed by nagarattars. Simultaneously, Chola temples emerged as economic hubs endowed with devadana (land grants), and empowered as rheostats of irrigation and artisanal production.
Remarkable as Cholas were in record-keeping — from the minutiae of irrigation-tank maintenance to rice-paddy yields — they were also a regime obsessed with surveillance. Wordy deeds codified brahmadeya, devadana and duties of village assemblies. State-appointed naduvagai ceyvars (accountants) and kankani nayakas (overseers) ensured that communal decisions aligned with royal revenue imperatives. Rigorous audits reviewed revenue targets and exemptions, wherein every remission required centralised ratification.
Much euphoria has revolved around the concept of Chola elections by kudavolai (lottery) among the local committees. These offered a democratic veneer, but the franchise remained narrowly circumscribed within clannish coteries, while state commissioners retained veto power.
Chola patronage of merchant guilds (ayyavole and manigramam) forged expansive trade-relations with South-East Asia and Sung China, while ships requisitioned from those guilds enlarged Chola warrior fleets. Revenues were reploughed for naval expansion in a commercial empire spanning over 2,200 miles — from Bengal to Sri Lanka and the Malay Archipelago.
Here lies a well-concealed narrative of Chola supremacy, of profit-driven plunder. The Lankan chronicle Culavamsa recounts desecrated temples and monastic reliquaries around the 10th-11th century, around the time when Rajaraja-I and Rajendra-I's Lankan and South-East Asian raids targeted portable wealth, comprising temple treasuries, in the name of territorial expansion.
Chola naval ascendancy clubbed martial hegemony with mercantile collaboration, provisioning warships, recruiting mariners and amassing siege-equipment without democratic will. This was at odds with the dharmic ideal of righteous rule. Though 11th-century Chola navies realigned trade from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, their profits were not redistributed for the upkeep of coastal nagarams.
The Cholas were not classical democrats. The real reason behind their return to public discourse is not democracy but the same political impulse that led Margaret Thatcher to turn to the Victorians, or the Victorians to turn to the Greeks.
There is no need to shy away from marvelling at the fluid grace of a bronze dancing Shiva from Chola times. Indians, like the Greeks, Britons and Americans, too deserve to celebrate their antiquity's heritage. But an uncritical historicism marks the vanity of present-day ideologues while concealing past foibles.
One cannot help but also ruminate on the fact that back in 1940, Vedic scholar Justice T Paramasiva Iyer revealed that in the 10th and 11th centuries, during the reign of Rajaraja-I, Rajendra-I and Kulottunga-I, the supposed location of the Ram Setu was shifted from the Korkai harbour to its currently famed site at Adam's Bridge. The consecration of the Rameswaram lingam at the Rameswaram temple officiated a new tradition of Vaishnavite and Shaivite synergism in southern India. Political pundits may feel tempted to join the dots keeping in mind that a 21st-century history of the Cholas is also a history of the present.
The writer teaches at O P Jindal Global University and is the author of The Great Indian Railways, Indians in London and Adam's Bridge