Population Crises and Population Cycles

Monsoon Asia is dominated by the monsoon winds, which bring a dry season in winter and a rainy season in summer. Here irrigation was developed not only from great rivers but also by collecting rainwater during the rainy season in huge reservoirs. One built in Ceylon in the 5th century AD had a dam 5.6 kilometres long, and a delivery channel of 80 kilometres. High population density, and the importance of water control, produced hydraulic societies exactly like those of China and the dry belt.

The core of the region is the subcontinent of India. (The modern nation of India is distinguished throughout by italics.) Civilization appeared here in the Indus Valley (Figure 2A), in about the 23rd century BC, with two large cities, a sea-port, and dozens of smaller sites. Upper-class houses had bathrooms, and there was an excellent sewer system. Stone seals were inscribed with pictures and a written script, not yet deciphered, and there was trade with the cities of Sumer and Akkad.

Early in the 2nd millennium BC, population crisis set in. Rooms were subdivided, mansions were converted to tenement blocks, and the quality of seals and pottery declined. By the 18th century BC, the civilization had succumbed to invaders from the West, an Indo-European-speaking people, the Aryans. They first sacked outlying villages, and then the cities themselves; skeletons found in the later levels bore marks of violence.

Over the next millennium, cililization re-emerged, this time on the Ganges plain. From the 4th century BC, we can discern population cycles in Indian history (Figure 1, Table1). During relief periods, there were unified empires based on the fertile Ganges plain, and controlling more or less of the North-West and the South (Figure 2, B-F). During population crises, as in China, the empires disintegrated into many small states, there were dreadful famines (e.g. in AD 1342-5, 1769-70, 1782) and destructive invasions.

The Maurya Empire was emphatically a police state, with extensive use of torture and an army of spies and informers, including prostitutes. The Gupta Empire was far more humane, and did not even use capital punishment. Under the Guptas and King Harsha, with exceptionally low population density, Indian civilization reached its peak, with marvellous achievements in poetry, drama, visual arts, mathematics, astronomy, surgery and metallurgy.

By this time, Hinduism had assumed its final form, through the fusion of the Aryan religion, Western influences, and elements from the Indus Valley civilization, where Shiva and the Mother Goddess appear on seal-stones. Much earlier, in the 6th century BC, Buddha had established his philosophy, which soon became a religion. Both Hinduism and Buddhism flourished under the Mauryas, Guptas and Harsha.

The subsequent invaders and the next two empires were Moslem. They extirpated Buddhism in its homeland, though by then it had been diffused over much of Asia, and often persecuted Hinduism, though an admirable toleration was practised by Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq (AD 1325-1351) and the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556-1605).

The British dangerously intensified Indian agriculture, producing a population explosion, and failed to supply large-scale birth control (Figure 1 and caption). When they withdrew in 1947, severe population crisis set in. As usual, the empire disintegrated, into India, Pakistan, Bangladesh (1971) and the Himalayan states. In 1947, 200,000-500,000 people died (estimates vary), as Hindus, Sikhs and Moslems murdered each other. Since then, the Indian government has made serious efforts at birth control, but in 1992 the population growth rate was still 2.0%. Hence the usual crisis effects - unemployment (Figure 3), communal riots, growing again in frequency and intensity since the 1960s, and environmental damage - 70% of available water polluted, and 1.5 million hectares of forest lost every year. But overpopulation is far worse in Pakistan, with a growth rate of 3.1%, and 68% of irrigated land waterlogged or salinized.

As in China and the dry belt, recurrent population crises generated stress culture, especially the subjection of women. By the crisis following the Guptas, Hindus had begun to burn widows alive (sati). Muhammad bin Tughluq and Akbar tried to suppress the hideous practice, but with each crisis it grew more frequent. The British and the modern Indian government finally made it a rare crime. The Indian authorities have improved the condition of women, especially in higher education, but in 1991 female literacy was still only 39%, compared with 64% for men. The problem is complicated by water and fuel shortages, which increase the workload of peasant women.

Islamic civilization lasted longer in India than elsewhere, so there were distinguished women, such as Raziyyat-ud-din, ablest of the Delhi sultans (reigned 1236-1240), who rode in armour at the head of her troops, and the gifted historian Gul-Badan (1523-1603). But eventually seclusion of women set in here. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, planned to promote equality between the sexes. But in 1977, and more completely in 1991, the desperately overpopulated country became a Fascist state, like Saudi Arabia, Iran (1979) and Afghanistan (1992). These states are misleadingly called Islamic, but (as we saw in the third paper) their subjection of women contravenes the teaching of Mahommed and the practice of high Islamic civilization and of genuine modern Moslems in these countries and elsewhere (for instance a genuine Moslem reform movement in Indonesia, dedicated to promoting equality between the sexes). Goodwin (1994) has established that in Pakistan women are officially sent to prison as a punishment for being raped.