History books and pride in our country....

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.

There is no need to be ashamed of our past. This is not saffronization as we are made to believe. This is the real history. So, let us wake up and re-write the books.