After 18 months of going on
steroids for a skin virus, I was told that this virus would remain dormant and
strike as and when required. It will be around for 25+ years. Every time it
strikes, it will be the same steroids. The side effects of the steroids were
not worth the trouble. I looked around for alternatives and was told that the
old Indian Medicinal system, Ayurveda, had a solution. So, after 3 years, I
decided to meet an Ayurvedic Doctor. He took a look at my skin, felt my pulse
and wrote out his prescription. He asked me to pick up the medicines at the
counter in his pharmacy. I did that. I meet him every 2 months and have never
had an attack since then. Don’t mistake me….I am not against the allopathy form
of medicine. This true story is to convey that I had not had the courage to try out the Indian
version like many of us in India….I wondered why?
A look in to the history text
books in India will be part of the answer. When I studied history in school in India, I
read it from two really thick text books. A small part in the beginning taught
us the Indus Valley Civilization and then some parts of recorded history like
the Maurya Dynasty. The balance of the
books (around 80%-85% of the books) were on the successive invasion of India by
various tribes from the North West. I learnt how India was annexed by
successive rulers like the Ghazni, Ghori, the Slave Dynasty, the Mughals and
then the British. I learnt how we were kicked around in succession by various
countries. I learnt all this in a foreign language (English). I did not learn
the language in which all our original texts were written up – Sanskrit. Over a period of time, I learnt to
appreciate everything foreign from clothing, to food, to way of life and also
medicine. Nothing wrong in any of this….but I did not know that there was an India
before all this…and that it was an amazing civilization. I am not giving this as an excuse but this is a fact for most Indians today.
It was not just me but my dad and
his dad had also learnt only parts of the amazing civilization that existed. We
all thought and believed that our great epics were fiction (mythology) and all
characters were fictitious. I grew up believing the same. The Indian History
Texts (Puranaas) talked of the Maurya Dynasty and the ones after that and I
believed that part because the Greek Historians also wrote about them. I didn’t
believe anything else that the Puranaas wrote on and recorded and they had a
lot before these periods. I always needed a foreign text or confirmation on a
fact about India before I believed it. I had lost pride in everything Indian.
Oppenheimer’s response to a
question on how he felt having exploded the first atomic bomb on earth was the
eye opener. He said, “Not the first atomic bomb but the first one in modern
history.”….he clearly believed that the description in Mahabharata given on a
device that caused destruction all around was actually the first atomic bomb in
recorded history. And then, suddenly, Mahabharata was no more just a story book
or long poem written by some Sage Veda Vyasa. It became a reality. Even today, many of my generation and the
generation before that and all after my generation still believe that Ramayana
and Mahabharata are mythology.
I believe that it is time to
re-write our history books, to re-introduce Sanskrit as a compulsory language to
learn and bring to life what we have been thinking as stories. There is now
enough archaeological evidence that our great epics were a good representation
of the happenings of those days. In typical Indian style they were written in
verses and the interpretation could be varied. The inner meaning was understood
by few and passed down by word of mouth. This was the mistake they made.
Information was not democratized.
Many temples in South East Asia,
Middle East (as far of as Lebanon where an ancient pyramid has been found with
a lotus carved in it) have Indian Architectural influence. The Brihadeswara
Temple in Tanjore has amongst its various carvings, one carving of a European
King and one of a Chinese Emperor. How, such an accurate depiction was possible
seems to baffle historians as movement across these countries started only in
the 1300s as recorded by history. Similarly, the Shaolin Kung Fu style of
Martial Art seems to have travelled from India to China. Not that some form of
martial arts did not exist in China before that. However, the Shaolin Kung-Fu
style seems to be influenced from the Indian Form that the Indian Monk
Bodhidharma took from India. He seems to have worked with various Buddhist
Monks to help translate Sanskrit Books of knowledge to Chinese. These are
recorded in history as in the period somewhere between 380 and 500 CE (or AD)…no
one seems to have an exact timeline.
The work done by Indians in the
field of Maths, Astronomy, General and Spiritual Well-being (Yoga), Medicine,
is there to be seen. Only that we have not learnt the language and we have
quickly lost that history and they remain as names that we recall now and then
and say that they are great. These are the scholars that need to be studied in
our history. This is the history that we need in our books in India….this is
the history that should be for most part of our books. The last 1000 years need to be
studied too…but then that is only the last 1000 years in a history that spans
thousands of years. It should only get that space it deserves – definitely not
most of the text books that we study.
This is a serious topic and I
believe that we should wake up and help our friends in the NCERT to re-write
the history books to reflect accurately what a truly great nation we were and
are. If you want pride in your nation, it is a must that you learn its
fantastic history in the right manner and with an accurate version. We should
not be a nation that will believe its history only when it is stated by a foreigner.
