That Indians invariably lost all the battles with invaders is a fact of history. This has been true from prehistoric times to our recent past. The India-China battle of 1962 to some extent fits into this pattern. It will be well to note that this trend is not confined only to Muslim invasions and to view it in this manner will be to miss the larger picture. There were many pre-Islamic invasions as that of Huns and Sakas with similar end results. Foreign invasions go far back in our history—perhaps the Aryans were among the earliest invaders and settlers—but the deviate has largely been centered around the Islamic invasions because those invasions were not just physical invasions but had an added dimension of cultural and religious invasion.

Our almost constant defeat on battlefields has been the cause of great pain and embarrassment to Indians who have some sense of their roots and history. Civilizationally India has been a great country that has had more than its share of saints, sages, mathematicians, and otherwise men. But they could do nothing to save the country from repeated humiliations at the hands of invaders. And this is what we V.S. Naipaul calls our civilization a wounded civilization. Historians have called India the land of easy conquest where time and again much smaller armies of invaders have defeated much larger armies of India. So what made India the land of easy conquest? Generally, the answer given is that it was because of Jaichand’s – this is traitors within the country as also due to lack of unity among Indians. This is definitely one of the reasons but it cannot be the main reason as there have been traitors in almost all countries and there has been infighting and deceits everywhere but no country has had such a pitiable record of defending itself against foreign invaders.

In the centuries gone by—leaving aside the last 3- 4 centuries— the only power available in the world was MUSCLE POWER either of the humans or of the animals. Science, Machine power, and the technology associated with warfare came only in the last 3-4 hundred years. Since muscle power was the only power going those who had muscle power dominated those who had less of it (It is also because of this reason that males dominated females). Indians for various reasons have been deficient in muscle power. This was true centuries back and is true even today. Our poor performance in the Olympics, high incidence of heart disease and diabetes proves this point. The physically weak Indians could not withstand the onslaught of muscular tribesmen who came from across the Khyber. Later these very tribes embraced Islam.

But why is that Indians are so poor in physical fitness? There could be multiple reasons. Is it in our genes? Perhaps. But then there have been so many waves of immigration into India so many races settling in this country means that this country has multiple genes. Is it that physically strong races settling in India have their vitality sapped within a few generations? And then a weakened country inviting fresh rounds of invasions. Why it is that people who live in India tend to lose vitality and physical fitness. I think it is due to the climate and the way of life.

Climatically India is a warm country & this climate is not conducive to much physical activity which makes for poor physical fitness. It also has a bearing on the way of life. For ages, the way of life in India has been very different from the way of life of people living in central Asia and Afghanistan from where invaders largely came. The Indian subcontinent is very large and had perhaps the largest cultivatable land from the lands then known. Its warm climate enabled at least two crops in a year as against one crop in the cold countries. This offered Indians prosperity and a settled way of life not be found elsewhere in the world. India was called Sone Ki Chiriya not for nothing. This was true both in the Hindu period of our history as also in the Muslim period. 

There evolved a civilization where culture and art and other things of the mind like religion and philosophy grew. Religions like Buddhism and Jainism evolved with Ahinsa(Non-violence) as its core. Things of the mind like philosophy and music grew further because of the respect they commanded from the society thereby brain getting more prominence by brawn. Contrast this with conditions in Afghanistan and Central Asia. The climate was harsh. There was no agriculture and survival was a challenge. Fighting was the only way of life in which only the fittest would survive. This gave rise to a martial culture totally lacking in India. When Babar invaded India he easily overcame the much larger army of Ibrahim Lodhi. However few generations later the Mughals meekly submitted to Nadir Shah. And a few years later a larger army of Marathas suffered a crushing defeat in the hands of a much smaller army of Ahmed Shah Abdali.

The invasions had a devastating effect on India both physically and emotionally. This aspect has already received and is receiving a lot of attention so there is no need for me to dwell further. However, it cannot be denied that the invaders who decided to settle in India and the steady stream of immigrants coming into India injected into this country a fresh dose of vitality which India would be badly in need of. So while the existing culture was vandalized, brutalized and emasculated new cultures took root and prospered. This is true of whether it was the Aryan invasion of 4000 years ago or the British coming to India 40o years ago.

Some people have put forward the theory that the Aryans were original inhabitants of India and it is from here they spread to different parts of the world. To my mind this theory is laughable. Any original inhabitant of India could never have had the vitality to travel thousands of miles, overcome and overwhelm the locals and settle there. As wherever they went those areas could not have been without any local human population and in order to settle there they would have had to fight it out which appears to be beyond the physical capabilities of any race originating in India.