Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography (2 page)

BOOK: Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography
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Not all the continuities of Indian history are linear. Some of them are circular. The Jews came to India as traders and refugees in the first century
AD
and settled along the southwestern coast. Almost two thousand years later, their descendants would return to the modern state of Israel. Similarly, Arabs traders came to India in the Middle Ages to seek their fortune. From the 1970s, their descendants, the Moplahs of Kerala, would return in large numbers to the oil.
rich Arab states to work for their distant cousins. Most interesting of all was the fate of the Timurid dynasty, better known as the Mughals. In the fourteenth century, Taimur the Lame would capture Delhi and massacre its inhabitants in the tens of thousands. His direct descendant, the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, would watch helplessly as the British sacked Delhi in 1858 and put his sons to death.

Of course, the history of India’s physical geography is older than that of its civilization or even that of the human race. The subcontinent has been a distinct geological entity for millions of years. Therefore, to understand India we must go back to the very beginning.

1
Of Genetics and Tectonics

The Indian subcontinent was not always
located where it is today but was once attached to Africa and Madagascar. This is a
relatively recent discovery. Till the early twentieth century, it was assumed that
most geological features were due to vertical rather than horizontal movements in
the earth’s crust. Thus, the positions of the continents were considered
to be essentially fixed. This was first challenged by the hypothesis of continental
drift, proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 and expanded in his book
The Origin of
Continents and Oceans
published in 1915. He suggested that the present
continents once formed a single land mass that drifted apart like icebergs. The
hypothesis explained an observation that had puzzled map-makers like Ortelius since
the sixteenth century—the fact that land masses, especially those on the
opposite sides of the Atlantic, seemed to fit together neatly like a jigsaw
puzzle.

Wegener’s arguments would have
to wait for half a century before adequate scientific evidence could be found to
support it. In the late fifties and sixties a great deal of new geological data
proved that the earth’s crust was a patchwork of plates that were moving
relative to each other. This led to the modern theory of plate tectonics. It is
still a very new field and our understanding is still evolving. Nonetheless, the
broad contours of the story are now clear.

It appears that most of the
earth’s land mass was joined together a billion years ago in a
supercontinent called Rodinia. It was probably located south of the equator but
there is still a great deal of debate about its exact shape and size, and where
India’s land mass fit into it.
1
This supercontinent broke up around 750 million years ago and the various
continents began to drift apart. Very little is known about this period (loosely
dubbed the Pre-Cambrian period). Existing life forms were no more than single-cell
organisms like bacteria. However, there is one remaining relic from the Pre-Cambrian
period that is still very visible—the Aravalli range. It is arguably the
oldest surviving geological feature anywhere in the world.

The Aravallis were once tall mountains,
possibly as high as the Himalayas. Over hundreds of millions of years they have been
eroded down to low hills and ridges. Yet, these diminutive hills have been witness
to many important events of Indian history. The northernmost point of the Aravallis
is the North Ridge near Delhi University. Today, college sweethearts cuddle among
the ancient rocks, oblivious to both passers-by and history, but the North Ridge was
the stage for an important turning point in Indian history. It was here that a small
British garrison held out in 1857 against a much larger force of Indian
rebels and pounded the walls of Shahjehanabad (what is now
called Old Delhi). The British eventually received reinforcements and stormed the
city. Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled to Burma and his sons were
executed. Thus ended the great Mughal dynasty.
2

From Delhi, the Aravallis extend into
Haryana. As I write, I can see the low rocky ridges holding out against an onslaught
of Gurgaon’s modern buildings. Sadly these ancient hills are now being
destroyed by indiscriminate mining. One of the worst examples of this can be seen on
a side branch of the range near Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Ask to be driven to Balsamand
Lake, an eleventh-century lake on the outskirts of the city. The lake is often dry
these days due to the wholesale destruction of its water-catchment area.
3
Along its banks is an area of several square kilometres where the terrain has
been gouged out by stone quarrying (some legal, some illegal). The air is filled
with the sound of drills and dynamite, the dust and smoke of trucks laden with
stone. Not a single tree stands against the glare of the relentless desert sun. It
is a vision of hell.

Farther south, near the
Gujarat–Rajasthan border, the Aravallis briefly lay claim to being
mountains rather than mere hills. The Guru Shikhar peak at Mount Abu rises to 1722
metres above sea level. This is a sacred place of temples and legends. The Rajput
warrior clans claim that their ancestors arose from a great sacrificial fire on this
mountain. Not far from Abu is the beautiful lake-city of Udaipur. This was once the
capital of the kingdom of Mewar, which bravely fought medieval invaders against
impossible odds. The hills and valleys still ring with ballads of how Rana Pratap
and his army
of Bhil tribesmen refused to surrender to the
Mughals. Long before all these events, however, the Aravallis witnessed a major
shift in the evolution of life on this planet.

Fossil records suggest that around 530
million years ago, there was a sudden appearance of a large number of complex
organisms. This is called the Cambrian Explosion although it still took millions of
years. Over the next 70-80 million years, we see an astonishing array of life forms
evolve. Meanwhile, the continental land masses began to reassemble and, around 270
million years ago, they fused into a new supercontinent called Pangea.
4
It is now thought that this cyclical assembling and breaking up of
supercontinents has always been a part of the geological history of the earth.

A map of Pangea would show the Indian
craton wedged between Africa, Madagascar, Antarctica and Australia (see map). It was
on Pangea that the dinosaurs appeared 230 million years ago. However, the earth
remained restless and Pangea began to break up around 175 million years ago during
the Jurassic era. It first split into a northern continent called Laurasia
(consisting of North America, Europe and Asia) and a southern continent called
Gondwana (Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and India). Note that the
name Gondwana is itself derived from the Gond tribe of central India.

We now see a sequence of rifts that
separate India from its neighbours. First, India and Madagascar separated from
Africa around 158 million years ago and then, 130 million years ago, they separated
from Antarctica. Around 90 million years ago India separated from Madagascar and
drifted steadily northwards.
5

A large number of dinosaur remains have
been found in Raioli village of Balasinor taluka, Gujarat. The site was
identified in 1981 and appears to have been a popular hatchery
as thousands of fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found there. Fossilized bones
have also been found including those of a previously unknown predator that was
25–30 feet long and two-thirds the size of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The
animal has since been named Rajasaurus Narmadsensis (means Lizard King of the
Narmada). The site is now protected and is being converted into a Dinosaur Park.
6

As the Indian craton drifted northwards
towards Asia, it passed over the Reunion ‘hotspot’, which caused
an outburst of volcanic activity. Most of these eruptions happened in the Western
Ghats near Mumbai and created the Deccan Traps. This is not the type of volcanic
eruption that one associates with the perfectly conical Mount Fuji in Japan. Rather,
it was more like a layer-by-layer oozing that created the stepped, flat-topped
outcrops that geologists call Traps. The term is apt for, in the late seventeenth
century, Shivaji and his band of Maratha guerillas would use this unique terrain to
trap and wear down the armies of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The volcanic episode
did not last very long—perhaps just thirty thousand years—but it
was a dramatic phenomenon and there are some scholars who feel that it may have
contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs. Looking out from Lord Point at the hill
station of Matheran, one can clearly see the geological impact of all the volcanic
activity.

Meanwhile, India kept up its relentless
northward journey and, 55–60 million years ago, it collided with the
Eurasian plate. This collision pushed up the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau. What
are now tall mountains were once under the sea, which is why marine fossils are
quite common high up in
the mountains. The process is not
over—the Indian plate is still pushing into Asia. As a result the
Himalayas are still rising by around 5 mm every year (although erosion reduces the
actual increase in height). Given the lack of vegetation, Ladakh is a good place to
visually appreciate the geological impact of this process. Not surprisingly, the
resulting tectonic pressures make the Himalayas seismically unstable and prone to
frequent and powerful earthquakes.

The northward drift of the Indian land
mass

The broad contours of the above
narrative of India’s geological history are generally accepted. However,
there remain many unresolved issues and several findings that do not neatly fit into
the story. One puzzle relates to the discovery of a large number of insects
preserved in amber found in Vastan, 30 km north of Surat, a geological zone called
Cambay Shale. It is a big finding that includes 700 species, representing 55
families. These insects are not unique to India, but very similar to those found in
other continents and as far away as Spain. The problem is that the currently
accepted view about the northward drift of the Indian craton would mean that the
subcontinent would have been an isolated island for tens of millions of years at the
time when these insects emerged. So, how did these insects get to India? It is
possible that there were islands that allowed them to hop across to the
subcontinent. Perhaps, the date of the Indo–Asian collision was earlier
than generally accepted. Frankly, we really do not know.
7

Nonetheless, India’s
relentless push into Asia continues, making the subcontinent tectonically very
active. As we shall see in the next chapter, it is very likely that a tectonic event
diverted the course of a major river and, with it, the course of Indian
civilization. The danger still lurks. The 2005 earthquake in North Pakistan and
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir registered a magnitude of 7.6 on the Richter scale and
claimed eighty thousand lives. However, much more powerful earthquakes have been
recorded along the mountain range. The Assam earthquake of 1950 registered a
magnitude of 8.6; it is one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded.
Fortunately, the epicentre was in an area that was then relatively sparsely
populated and so it killed only 1500 people. A similar
earthquake in a densely populated area today would kill hundreds of thousands if
not millions. Given tectonic pressures, it is only a matter of time before this
happens. This is why the Himalayan range is one of the most dangerous places to
build large dams.

With the Indian plate wedged into Asia
along the Himalayas, the stage was set for the formation of the youngest of
India’s geological features—the Gangetic plains. They started
out as a marshy depression running between the Himalayas and an older mountain range
called the Vindhyas. Silt brought down by the Ganga and its tributaries slowly began
to fill up this hollow to create a fertile alluvial plain. Note that this process is
so recent that early humans would have witnessed it. We know that the Ganga
repeatedly changed its course and shifted southward leaving behind oxbow lakes that
can still be seen.

The Ganga’s southward drift
was arrested only when it nudged into the Vindhyas near Chunar (close to Varanasi).
It is the only place in the plains where a hill commands such a view over the river,
making Chunar fort a coveted strategic location. It was once said that he who
controlled Chunar fort also controlled the destiny of India. A walk through the fort
is a walk through Indian history. The walls resonate with tales of the legendary
King Vikramaditya, the Mughals, Sher Shah Suri and Governor-General Warren Hastings.
There are remains here from each era including an eighteenth-century sundial. Do not
miss the neglected British graves below the walls. Their headstones make for
interesting reading. Just south-west of the fort are the quarries that, in the third
century
BC
, supplied the stone used by the Mauyans to
carve the lions of Sarnath, now the national symbol. We will return to them in
Chapter 3
.

POPULATING INDIA

When India collided with Asia, it
rejoined the broader ecological milieu of the rest of the world. Many people assume
that the similarities between present-day Indian and African mammals (elephants,
rhinos, lions, etc) are due to the fact that India was once attached to Africa. As
we have seen, this cannot be the case because India separated from Africa during the
age of the dinosaur.
8
The entry of large mammals into India was due to its geographical re-attachment
to Eurasia and the shifting climatic zones that allowed or forced these animals to
migrate into India. Take for instance a genetic study of the frozen remains of a
Siberian mammoth that died 33,000 years ago. The scientists of the Max Planck
Institute in Leipzig found that the Asian elephant is more closely related to the
mammoth than to the African elephant. It appears that the genetic lines of the Asian
and the African elephant separated six million years ago whereas the Asian elephants
and the mammoths diverged only 440,000 years ago.
9

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