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From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com

Culture

Why Are Indian Historians In A Denial Mode?

By David Frawley
Swarajya, swarajyamag.com
Monday, June 27, 2016

The left-leaning historians of India have not understood
the country's vast spiritual and plural empire

Their idea of India is an accident, a disaster born out
of Hinduism

The role of Hindu revivalism is thus diminished by them
to further their own theories

India today is a strange country in that, uniquely among
the nations of the world, it seems to be afraid of its
own history.

If we study current historical accounts, particularly by
India's academic left, the most important fact about the
history of India is that there is no real history of
India. This is because such scholars are unable to see
the existence of any cohesive entity called India before
1947.

India as a real country in their view is attributed
mainly to Jawaharlal Nehru and his followers after
independence on a region that, though previously under
the umbrella of British rule, was otherwise lacking in
unity, continuity or perhaps even civilisational depth.

Such historians are happy to negate the history of their
own country. Their accounts of India's history are
largely denials of any enduring country, civilisation or
culture worthy of the name. Their history of India is one
of foreign invasions, temporary or vanished empires,
internal social divisions and conflicts, and a disparate
and confused cultural diversity. They regard India as a
melting pot or conglomeration of widely separated peoples
and cultures coming together by the accident of geography
that hardly constitutes any united country or national
identity.

Unfortunately, such Indian historians, particularly with
political alliances with left historians in UK and US,
are introducing their anti-India ideas into Western
academia, which still does not understand India's very
different civilisational model.

Such studies forget that national identity is cultural,
not simply political. India did not become a British
state under British rule or an Islamic state under Muslim
rule. The older Indian/Bharatiya culture continued.

These anti-India views are easily countered by a number
of historical facts.

The first is that outside people and countries have long
recognised a civilisation called India.

After Alexander the Great came to India in the fourth
century BCE, the Greek historian Megasthenes wrote a book
on the region called Indika, in which he noted an
existing tradition in the country of 153 kings going back
over 6,400 years. The Greeks overall lauded the
civilisation of India.

Buddhist pilgrims in the ancient and medieval period,
particularly from China, honoured India and its great
culture during their travels. India's cultural influence
spread to Indonesia and Indochina in the East and into
Central Asia, extending on a religious level to China and
Japan.

The ancient Romans lost much of their wealth in a one-
sided trade with India and the Europeans long sought the
riches of India. Columbus, of course, found America by
chance while looking for a more direct sea route to
India.

Second, India, like many countries, has more than one
name. The Indian Constitution says the "India that is
Bharat". Bharat is the main ancient name for the region
going back to King Bharat, an ancient ruler long before
Rama, Krishna or Buddha.

The Bharatas were the main people of the ancient Rig
Veda, who ruled from the Sarasvati region. They
eventually split into several groups, one of which, the
Kurus, became dominant in late ancient times, as the main
people of the Mahabharata.

Modern historians can more easily deny history to the
name India than to Bharat and so ignore the other name of
the country.

Third, India has probably the oldest, largest and most
continuous literature of any civilisation. The Vedas with
their many thousands of pages dwarf anything from the
Middle East, Egypt or Greece of the ancient period.

Geography is an important topic in these texts. The Vedas
speak of a land of seven rivers, Sapta Sindhu, extending
to the ocean, of which the Sarasvati River was the most
important. The Persians in their oldest Zend Avesta
remember the area as Hapta Hindu. Sindhu, Hindu and India
are related terms.

The Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas outline a sacred
geography of India/Bharat from Kailas in the north to
Lanka in the south, Assam in the east to beyond the Indus
in the west. Buddhist and Jain texts do the same, showing
a common culture and geography.

Around this sacred geography, Indians built numerous
temples and recognised numerous sacred sites, revealing
this vast region and its cultural unity.

Along with these sacred sites are numerous festivals and
pilgrimages. We see this in modern India, which has the
largest tradition of pilgrimage in the world, notably the
massive Kumbha Melas that bring in tens of millions of
pilgrims. Pilgrims throughout India visit these sites,
with South Indians commonly travelling as far as the
Himalayan temples of the north. Festivals like Diwali are
elaborately celebrated throughout the country.

Ancient Indian literature contains a calendar system
still widely followed, the Panchanga. Indian calendars
extend from historical time of thousands of years to
cosmic time of billions of years.

Fourth, extensive new evidence of archaeology upholds the
cultural continuity of the region. The Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) claims that in the
Haryana/Kurukshetra/Sarasvati river area there is
evidence of a continual development of agriculture and
civilisation from 8000 BCE, extending through the
Harappan urban era. This area hosts Rakhigarhi, the
largest Harappan site, more extensive than Mohenjodaro or
Harappa.

The Harappan Civilization -- also called the Indus Valley
or Saraswati Civilisation -- is the largest and most
uniform urban civilisation of the ancient world in the
third millennium BCE. It ended with the drying up of the
Sarasvati River around 1900 BCE, which the Geological
Survey of India (GSI) has verified. The Vedas refer to
the different stages of the Sarasvati river from an
ocean-going stream to drying up in the desert, showing
they resided on the river long before its termination.

Consistent with their negative line of thought, leftist
historians ignore this information or accuse
archaeologists of political bias in their findings.

Lastly, but equally important, the independence movement
drew inspiration from the older history of India/Bharat,
with such revered figures as Swami Vivekananda, Lokmanya
Tilak and Sri Aurobindo seeking to revive the ancient
culture. Even Mahatma Gandhi's mantra was Ram and his
idea of India was Ram Rajya.

Not surprisingly, most of these independence leaders have
been ignored by the same group of historians, who have
made Nehru tower over them, with some afforded diminished
roles and others forgotten altogether.

The Congress party, the main support for such historians,
has since named every major institution or initiative in
India possible after the three members of the Nehru
family who became prime ministers. They have little
regard for other Congress prime ministers like P V
Narasimha Rao, whom they have also almost erased from
history.

Yet at the same time today, India's great culture and
civilisation through Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, Sanskrit,
Indian music and dance is once more influencing the
entire world -- expanding in spite of this historical
denigration.

It is time for these deconstructionist historians to be
deconstructed. Such historians, whose view of the world
is purely outward, do not have the insight to appreciate
India, because it is not a mere political formation but a
vast spiritual culture.

Their historical accounts reflect the attempt of a recent
ruling elite to rewrite history in its own image -- and
to deny legitimacy for any other group, even if it
requires denying the very existence of India before they
assumed power!

Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Indian History
David Frawley

- David Frawley is an American Hindu teacher and author.
He has written more than 30 books on the Vedas, Hinduism,
Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology.

http://swarajyamag.com/culture/why-are-indian-historians-in-a-denial-mode

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Swarajyamag
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Om Shanti

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