Causes of Indian Military Defeats

[civfanatic]

India definitely did colonize other countries. However, just as the British colonies in America eventually broke away from their motherland, so did Indian colonies in SE Asia and Indonesia.

Due to Indian colonization, we see the world's largest Hindu temple in CAMBODIA (not India) and the world's largest Buddhist temple in INDONESIA (again, not India!).

The entire region from Afghanistan to Indonesia, at one point or another, was under the dominion of an Indian power.

 

[civfanatic]

Another interesting evidence of Indian colonization is the place-names used in SE Asia. For example, "Cambodia" is derived from the region of "Kamboja", mentioned as one of the warrior kingdoms in the Mahabharat and by Alexander, and the kingdom of "Ayutthaya" in Thailand which is derived from "Ayodha".

And even today, the majority of people on the Indonesian island of Bali practice Hinduism (Bali was an ancient colony of the Chola Empire).

 

[Yusuf]

I would say that the hindu influence in SE Asia was more religio cultural than imperial. Not of the type of british subjugation. Again we come back to the cholas being the only one to even venture out over a history of 3000 odd years.

 

[neo29]

And even today, the majority of people on the Indonesian island of Bali practice Hinduism (Bali was an ancient colony of the Chola Empire).

Not only Bali but the entire coastline of all the way upto vietnam was once the part of Chola empire. Chola empire was vanquished by the Pandya empire. Either ways since the beginning the princely states just fought amongst themselves.

 

[Shaitan]

I would say that the hindu influence in SE Asia was more religio cultural than imperial. Not of the type of british subjugation. Again we come back to the cholas being the only one to even venture out over a history of 3000 odd years.

Idk why you would want to venture out, the Indian Subcontinent is big as it is. like 5,000,000+ KM2.. Usually the people that conqueror are the once that need more resources like the British, Mongols, etc.. Palas also with Chola, I am happy with India being one of the four major civilizations to start civilization it self. I am glad with empires in India that had wealth that cant even be matched with Rome and had an empire at the size of Rome and Alexander's. And know I am happy India will see its former glory in the future :happy_2:

 

[Shaitan]

Indians most not repeat what happened in rebellion of 1857.. When the Mughals and the Marathas were at least were fighting to together to only have Sikhs, Rajputs, and all those other princely states help British smash it all down. We must not let division between Indians. Shame, shame, shame!

 

[Shaitan]

Good point ajtr. That would have been BAD if India was once again many nations!!

 

[pankaj nema]

Basically we are "non militaristic " in nature . There is no point in going far back.Just look post 1947.

Having won our independence in a largely peaceful manner( we didnt massacre our british rulers ) , we thought we could KEEP our independence through peace and non violence

The influence of Gandhi and Nehru was so strong that we didnt have any military strength till 1962.
1962 was a good wake up call and we should thank China for it.

After 1962 Nehruji said in parliament "There is no place in this world FOR WEAK NATIONS."

Pakistanis were perfectly right in believing in 1965 war that they could overrun India.
It didnt happen because we were expecting a pakistani attack and in just 3 years we could put together a useful army goes to our credit.

 

[Iamanidiot]

Causes of Indian defeat
INDIAN SOCIETY:It was extremely rotten ,stagnant and without a change in the society no battles would be won.It was insular could not incorporate new knowledge nor could it incorporate new ideas and discard new ideas in the ancient and medieval periods it was least amenable to change and never had the conditions for the occurence of a rennaissance
Reason:Social stratification based on the caste system
Brahminism and Casteism ensured that the country masses would never be one homogenous mass who had a common sense of bonding with each other at various levels.In all this the brahmins are the biggest culprits.To ensure that they stay in power they encouraged the worst practices in society to take root

A)To ensure that there will be no flow of ideas into the indian society and Heterodox thinking.They ensured that education be contained among themselves and develop an insular attidude in the society.

b)They also made friggin rule that anyone who crosses the seas will loose their caste .This was a bloody ying-yang friggin rule.This hampered Indian trade and commerce to such a great extant that even emperors and kings were discouraged to send trade missions abroad.The sole reason for this rule was that travelling abroad would bring new ideas home which in turn would lead to a threat to their supermacy.

 

[civfanatic]

b)They also made friggin rule that anyone who crosses the seas will loose their caste .This was a bloody ying-yang friggin rule.This hampered Indian trade and commerce to such a great extant that even emperors and kings were discouraged to send trade missions abroad.The sole reason for this rule was that travelling abroad would bring new ideas home which in turn would lead to a threat to their supermacy.

Mate, what the hell are you talking about? The Cholas sent trade missions as far as Malaysia and Indonesia. Hell, then even sent INVASION FLEETS to conquer these areas.

Even during the 2nd century B.C.E. there was a thriving spice trade between the Romans and the Satavahanas.

 

[Iamanidiot]

Where as the cause of military defeats for the Mughal empire was instiutional(Mansabdari system became unviable) and Coupled with Auranzebs bigotry and the deccan ulcer ruined it.If not for Aurangzebs stupidity and obtuseness.It would have survived....no.There was always a fatricidal war of sucession happening after every emperors death ..example set by Jahangir and this continued until Akbar 2 s rein

 

[Iamanidiot]

Mate, what the hell are you talking about? The Cholas sent trade missions as far as Malaysia and Indonesia. Hell, then even sent INVASION FLEETS to conquer these areas.

Even during the 2nd century B.C.E. there was a thriving spice trade between the Romans and the Satavahanas.

They do not alone represent India even then most indian trade was done at home with foreign merchants coming to india not the other way round.There is a reason why arabs and jews dominated indian trade

 

[Agantrope]

This [Chola] country is at war with the kingdom of the [west] of India. The government owns sixty thousand war elephants, every one seven or eight feet high. When fighting these elephants carry on their backs houses, and these houses are full of soldiers who shoot arrows at long range, and fight with spears at close quarters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chola_military

Chola's use the Elephant as their own pet/cavalry.

 

[Phenom]

Although I would disagree with all the conclusions, overall I think the OP was a nice article. It goes into details of why Indian kings lost without resorting to excuses like 'They followed rules of wars' and what not. I don't think this passiveness is a Hindu phenomenon alone, IMO even later Mughals (who were completely Indianized) showed the same weakness that are shown by earlier Hindu Kings. So this is a Indian problem not just a Hindu problem.

Some reasons like 'India was rich that's why we didn't attack any one' isn't very true. India was never a single country so the economy of the entire country should not be taken into account. Saying India was a large economy is like saying Asia is the largest economy in the world today. There have also be empires like Rome, Persia and others who despite having a huge economy continued to expand their territory. Comparatively most (not all) Indian kingdoms would have had only a fraction of their wealth, yet they never found the need to expand their territory and wealth.

There is also another example to show that India was an exception, lets look at large continuous areas of settled populace around the world. There are a few major regions like Middle east, Europe, China and India. All the other regions had large empires that controlled them.

Middle east had Persia, Safavids and Several Caliphates
Europe had Rome for a large part of its history
China had several Chinese Dynasties Like Ming and Qing
India OTOH had none, expect for a breif period under Mauryas. Its not just that India never had an empire, but it seems nobody in India even tried.

We can count with one hand, the number of aggressive Indian empires, Mauryans under Chandragupta, Cholas, Vijayanagar (in early years) and Marathas are all I can think of. Rest of the kingdoms seems pretty content with ruling over their land and fighting small border skirmishes.

Nobody can say the exact reason for this attitude, may be it is the lack of killer instincts or may be there is some other factor, like caste system preventing mobilisation of a large standing army. Whatever the reason India's lack of large empires ended up making the country highly vulnerable to outside invasions

 

[Energon]

Mate, what the hell are you talking about? The Cholas sent trade missions as far as Malaysia and Indonesia. Hell, then even sent INVASION FLEETS to conquer these areas.

Even during the 2nd century B.C.E. there was a thriving spice trade between the Romans and the Satavahanas.

You are right, but so is he. After the sea fearing exploits of the Cholas regressive sects (I'm assuming Brahminical) were in fact successful in turning ocean travel into a grave taboo which subsequently brought about stagnation and insular self obsession within the Indian entity. This retrogression has clearly shown to have negatively impacted the ability of Indian kings and chieftains to compete with their counterparts in other parts of the world, most of whom summarily invaded India and humiliated them.

To think this ignorance was perpetuated till the English started transporting indentured labor to islands like Mauritius or those in the Caribbean is quite sobering. It should also be noted that in this time Muslim traders, merchants, travellers and sailors made out like bandits after their potential Hindu counterparts served them up with a monopoly on the platter. On a side note Amitav Ghosh's "sea of poppies" is a great read on the Kala Pani syndrome.

Funnily enough Indira Gandhi through her idiotic policies recreated the silo effect and repeated the disaster; only this time it was socio-economic in nature and it affected people in the hundreds of millions. Both these above mentioned epic fails have imparted a sense of inferiority complex within generation of Indians to come, many of whom try to overcompensate by revising history and/or mouthing off about India's great industrial prowess on the internet (while researching how to successfully obtain an H1B).

IMO it's far more valuable for the society to learn the lessons from its past failures. In the case of India, the first order of business is to boot out all regressive forces (generally in the form of self appointed guardians) who are obsessed with retaining the "true bhartiya culture" through fear mongering and social blackmail.

 

[Iamanidiot]

If not for the idiotic ayyers and ayyengars South-east asia would have been called India.Thats what I want to say

 

[Param]

You are right, but so is he. After the sea fearing exploits of the Cholas regressive sects (I'm assuming Brahminical) were in fact successful in turning ocean travel into a grave taboo which subsequently brought about stagnation and insular self obsession within the Indian entity. This retrogression has clearly shown to have negatively impacted the ability of Indian kings and chieftains to compete with their counterparts in other parts of the world, most of whom summarily invaded India and humiliated them.

To think this ignorance was perpetuated till the English started transporting indentured labor to islands like Mauritius or those in the Caribbean is quite sobering. It should also be noted that in this time Muslim traders, merchants, travellers and sailors made out like bandits after their potential Hindu counterparts served them up with a monopoly on the platter. On a side note Amitav Ghosh's "sea of poppies" is a great read on the Kala Pani syndrome.

Funnily enough Indira Gandhi through her idiotic policies recreated the silo effect and repeated the disaster; only this time it was socio-economic in nature and it affected people in the hundreds of millions. Both these above mentioned epic fails have imparted a sense of inferiority complex within generation of Indians to come, many of whom try to overcompensate by revising history and/or mouthing off about India's great industrial prowess on the internet (while researching how to successfully obtain an H1B).

IMO it's far more valuable for the society to learn the lessons from its past failures. In the case of India, the first order of business is to boot out all regressive forces (generally in the form of self appointed guardians) who are obsessed with retaining the "true bhartiya culture" through fear mongering and social blackmail.

Whoever came up with the IDIOTIC idea that seafaring would lead to loss of caste. These people had kept India isolated & uninformed of the changes happening in the world.
Europe was transformed by the rennaisance but there was no chance of renaissance in India because of the caste system & the fact that edu was restricted to a particular section of society. India would not have developed if not for 200 yrs of British rule.

 

[civfanatic]

Whoever came up with the IDIOTIC idea that seafaring would lead to loss of caste. These people had kept India isolated & uninformed of the changes happening in the world.
Europe was transformed by the rennaisance but there was no chance of renaissance in India because of the caste system & the fact that edu was restricted to a particular section of society. India would not have developed if not for 200 yrs of British rule.

I strongly disagree. We did not need foreign rule to develop India. Look at Japan. Until 1868 they were completely isolated from the rest of the world. But after their humiliation at the hands of the US Navy, the Japanese quickly opened up and rapidly modernized their country (Meiji Restoration). They then went on to defeat China, Korea, and even Russia in future wars.

The main difference between Japan and India at the time, however, was that Japan was unified under a single government, while India was an assortment of independent kingdoms, all of whom hated each other. Our lack of unity was the #1 reason why we failed to develop.

 

[Energon]

I strongly disagree. We did not need foreign rule to develop India. Look at Japan. Until 1868 they were completely isolated from the rest of the world. But after their humiliation at the hands of the US Navy, the Japanese quickly opened up and rapidly modernized their country (Meiji Restoration). They then went on to defeat China, Korea, and even Russia in future wars.

The main difference between Japan and India at the time, however, was that Japan was unified under a single government, while India was an assortment of independent kingdoms, all of whom hated each other. Our lack of unity was the #1 reason why we failed to develop.

While none of these theories can be tested in real life, there is certainly some merit to what Paramvir has said. One cannot deny that many modern ideas came into India during colonial rule. But prior to that, the record of collective action in India was abysmal when compared to Japan, so it is highly unlikely that the Indian society could have replicated the Meji restoration. Also an industrial revolution still evades India's mindset, so there's clearly something inherent in the culture that inhibits progress at a rapid rate.

Now Hinduism doesn't have an equivalent of the Vatican or the pope, but it is interesting to note that since independence, Hindu organizations haven't been very impressive in terms of promoting modernity and progress. Nor have they sponsored large scale and highly regarded educational institutions unlike their Christian and Jewish counterparts (who have clearly reaped its benefits). Most of India's technological progress and subsequent prosperity has come on the backs of secular institutions. Influential Hindu organizations on the other hand have been pretty heavily invested in a wide array of pseudosciences and historical revisionism.

At least for now, India owes the West for influencing whatever development it has managed thus far.

 

[The Messiah]

My observation is that the average Indian does not have ambition to conquer other far off countries and make an empire....it is prevalent now and has been for centuries.

As long as he is getting his daily requirements fulfilled he is happy and content with his life. We are peace loving people.

We were left behind in development because of backward caste system which limited education to the monirity of the population and self fighting which foreigners took advantage of.