History is an extraordinarily controversial yet interesting subject. It not only tells us about our past, our culture, and our legacy but also about the people who have written it for us. History is indeed a dynamic subject that keeps on changing as new facts and aspects keep revealing some unknown and unheard things about ancient civilizations.
We replace old theories with new concepts and update the knowledge based on the evidence. However, history has been used as a potent tool to spread misinformation and political propaganda. Unfortunately, we do experience a similar situation with Indian history as well.
We Indians enjoy a very healthy culture, a plethora of historical references, and a flourishing civilization, but we score very low when it comes to having a legitimate history of our nation. It has been said that thousands of scriptures and historical reference documents were destroyed or burnt by the invaders.
Past that it was the British era when the first attempt was made to write the history of India. However, due to their conscious biasedness and ulterior motives, the history written by them was broadly misunderstood and distorted.
Why Indian History is so distorted?
There is a famous saying, that “History is written by the Victors”. This is not just a saying, it’s a blatant truth and it shows who can write the history. Victors have distorted the facts and started teaching a blatantly false and even dangerously destructive history to the world, which has become a widespread phenomenon or problem across the board.
Do you think Indian history should be rewritten at the moment? This is a fundamental question that comes to mind when we witness a plethora of claims and allegations being made by supporters or opponents of this very question.
It is said that India’s history has been written by historians who were close to the invaders or the left-leaning dispensation all these years. The so-called “rightist” groups or people who believe in “Hindutva” ideology want to rewrite history to accommodate the aspects distorted or left behind.
India has witnessed the onslaught of two prominent imperialist religions (Islam and Christianity). Noth the religions have conquered most of the world, they destroyed all the Pagan religions and their culture, these religions had lived in mutual acceptance and comparative peace before the emergence of the Great Proselytisers. These powerful forces have completely annihilated the existing history and completely and effectively vilifies, blackened, and demonized everything associated with other pagan religions and cultural groups.
Hinduism and Bharat are the last targets of these two imperialistic religions. They are trying their best to create a narrative that could be viewed through a prism where everything done by Christians or Muslims is sacrosanct, and everything committed by Hindus is condemnable.
We know how the doctrines, dark texts, and evil ideologies of Christianity and Islam are completely whitewashed and Islam becomes a “Religion of Peace” whereas Christianity becomes a “Religion of Love”. On the other hand, the whole of Hinduism is reduced to the iniquities of the caste system and they have portrayed it as a “Religion of Evil”, or “Religion of Iniquity, Exploitation, and Superstition”.
Five great blunders that deformed the Indian History
Here we have compiled a list of 5 crucial blunders committed by our historians, which have completely deformed our history.
The myth of Aryan Invasion theory – This is undoubtedly among the biggest myth spread by British historians, they coined this theory and established a lie that Aryans invaded India from Europe and conquered other races. It was nothing but a method to propagate a psychological subjugation of Indians against the superiority of the Europeans. However, various studies and research have confirmed that there was no such invasion ever happened.
Aryan vs. Dravidian Theory – Another misleading description of our history has been the Aryan vs. Dravidian theory. The British tried their best to divide and rule our people, and they created a non-existing difference between the Aryans and Dravidians. They created a narrative that there is a rift between north and south India and these people are fighting with each other for thousands of years. However, on the contrary, the Aryans and Dravidians mixed with each other quite amicably which led to the growth of both cultures.
Inadequate Study of Indus Valley Civilization – There is no doubt that the Indus Valley Civilization is among the earliest human civilizations in the world. It was thousands of years old and the society and culture were so rich and sophisticated. But our historians didn’t give it the adequate attention it deserves. Even now we don’t know how to read and comprehend the Harappan script and how this civilization came to an end. To relegate this part of our past as not that important is a mistake and it doesn’t make understanding the rest of our history any easier.
Misrepresentation of the Vedas – The so-called historians have misrepresented the facts about our religious scriptures such as Vedas, Mahabharata, and Ramayana. They call them fictional and never tried to date them accurately. They simply call the divine characters mythical and denounce any attempt to validate their reality. However, the actual fact is that these epic scriptures were passed down through oral traditions before being written down, which shows how older they are than assumed.
Breakdown of History in Hindu, Islamic, and British Eras – This is among the biggest blunder where the history of India had been broken into Hindu, Islamic, and British eras. To be honest, Indian history cannot be segregated broadly into these three eras. Hinduism itself is quite a complex religion as during the Vedic times there were a lot of different philosophies and practices surviving simultaneously including atheism. Jainism and Buddhism were also a result of this tolerance of Vedic societies to different religions and methods of life. To divide history into such religion-based categories is also a way to divide and rule.
These misleading historical facts have been incorporated into our syllabus to impact our academia and generation. If you talk about the CBSE or ICSE course curiculum, both are based on the books written by the Left and British leaning historians. That’s the reason why our children are being feeding wrong history and facts all this while. There is an urgent need to rewrite the history, incorporate the new found facts to make the changes legitimate.
