Page:Sharad Joshi - Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage.pdf/194

 It was no longer necessary to loot by use of violence because in violence even your own blood had to be shed. Instead, a method was found to use taxation as an instrument of looting — instead of killing the goose it was better to collect an egg every day. This method provided maximum loot with minimum efforts. The ruling class had biggest opportunity to loot. Being in power provided continuity to the loot. Through this the institution of State developed and began to become more and more powerful. Thus, according to Joshi, the real motivation in history at all times was to loot the gains of agriculture. Different periods of history had different methods of looting – robbery, loot by the soldiers, revenue collected by kings, slavery, bonded labour, colonization, exploitation of raw materials by industry; but it still was looting. The history of human society is basically the history of these methods of looting the gains of agriculture. Keeping this broad framework in mind Joshi also interpreted the Indian history in a manner that was quite different from most other historians. In short it was something like this: ‘I was always faced with one big puzzle while reading history. Devgiri was such a powerful empire, but how could Muslim forces reached till there? This foreign army passed through vast parts of the country but how come it was not opposed by the farmers and common people along the way? ‘History always tells us that we fought gallantly but the aggressors outnumbered us and therefore we lost. The aggressors came from thousands of miles away; how could they possibly outnumber us on our own territory? ‘Many people have been puzzled by this strange situation. Even Karl Marx in his letters to Engels in 1853 had written about it. Writing of Indian villages, Marx had observed that When White Gold Turned Red

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