Nationalistic Reflection

The author betrays a deep sense of anguish and hurt as she interrogates herself and as such we the ‘Indians’. Each question, each submission, each query, each observation, provokes and impels. She quotes Megasthanese, Marco Polo, Idris, Arrian and Chinese travelers, who have spoken eloquently about the truthfulness, justice and fair play of Indians. The author quotes Marco Polo, who visited India in the 13th century and wrote: “you must know that these abraiaman, by which he seems to mean Brahamins, are the best merchants in the world and the most truthful for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth.” Then she quotes Max-Muller who says: “even in quite modern times the Mohamm-edans seem willing to admit that the Hindus at all events in dealings with the Hindus are more straight forward than Mohammedans dealing with Mohammedans”. Then she goes on to question our ‘present value systems’ that we are going to pass on to the next generation?

She laments the prevailing ‘adharma’ on this land, whose very basis is ‘dharma’. She yearns for revival of religion in this sacred land. She was outraged over the fact that all through the modern history of India, we Indians have been taught that we are ‘nobodies’ and everything good has or must come from ‘outside’.

She bemoans that we Indians have slavishly confined our perceptions to what is supplied.

She is intrigued by our insistence on ‘India’ as opposed to ‘Bharat’. She asserts that Bharat evokes our national heritage, literature and culture rather our very existence. She implies that Bharat has larger geographical connotations even before the concept of ‘nation-state’ was thousands of years ago.

Talking of the sense of geography of Indians or the Bharatvasis, it is pertinent to mention another book ‘India: A Sacred Geography’ by Diana L. Eck, wherein the author observes that most places in India are linked to some religious event or personality. The entire landscape of this country, i.e. rivers, hills and coastlines are energized with stories of Gods and heroes. Diana reminds us that if there is a narrative like ‘Kashi’, there is a wider narrative like ‘Uttar Kashi’ The psychological mapping of Bharat resides in the consciousness of most Bharatvasis.

To buttress, Diana’s arguments, it can be said that the passage of Rama from Ayodhya to Sri Lanka during his exile is also a commentary on the geographical and sociological mapping of India. Valmiki did not travel with Rama and yet the various episodes of Ramayana are intertwined with local legends, something impossible to achieve if it was not factual. In fact, in the ancient history of the world, there has never been such a convergence of archeology, local legends and literature. Yet, the cunning British historians and their subverted disciples in India declared Ramayana as ‘mythology’ and not ‘history’.

The author of the book ‘Live for India’-Anshu Pathak has also traversed through the history of India as taught to us. This western manufactured history starts with village civilization in Baluchistan 7000 years ago, then goes through Indus Valley, then to the birth of Buddha—all in 5000 years, then the Buddhist era generally speaking of more than one thousand years and Islamic rule of another thousand years,followed by more than 200 years of British rule. In this, western scheme of history, the Vedic period is deliberately left uninterrupted, nebulous. Anything that is not aligned to the western discourse or does not fit their doctored history must fall in the realm of mythology. The Vedic civilization, which we have inherited courses through our blood. We owe everything to this civilization, i.e. our religion, language, culture and our sensibilities. Our ancestors it seems had the perspicacity to understand that written sources of wisdom can be manipulated, subverted or killed, and that is why they considered it blasphemous to put the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Puranas into writing. The emphasis on purity and selective oral transmission was for this very reason.

But for our oral traditions, the British scoundrels and their Indian progeny, would have killed the Vedas as well, just as James Mills and Charles Grant tried to do when they fabricated Indian history sitting in England. In 1808, they were appointed to write the history of India and they did so without even visiting the country.

Any fool barring the subverted historians can construe the Hindu moorings of the Indus Valley civilization by just looking at the artifacts unearthed from Harappa and Mohenjodaro sites. This includes the figurines of Natraj. Imagine the intellectual dishonesty of these historians, when they say that the Aryans came to India from Central Asia and had a very rich language ‘Sanskrit’, and the Dravidians, who were the inhabitants of the Indus Valley, a sophisticated civilization had no literature. Can any civilization flourish without literature?

The travel from copper to bronze to iron as per historians of the Western genre took nearly 5,000 years. It can therefore be extrapolated that how much time the Vedic civilization may have taken to evolve.

Whenever the Western historians are confounded and can never assign dates to a particular personality or event, they become dismissive. By their method, they have not been able to fix the date of lifetime of Shankracharya, which Hindus have done with comfortable certainty. Actually, the Westerners can never relate to the Hindu concept of cyclic nature of time, i.e. Satyayuga, Dwaparyuga, Tretyayuga and Kaliyuga. This cyclic nature was not invented as a reaction to the linear concept of time of the Westerners. It was done in wisdom in some unimaginable past.

Anshu Pathak is saddened by the lack of confidence of Indians, whose forefathers had such high scientific intellect. She quotes a passage from the Rigveda, which accurately computes the speed of light. She talks about a shloka, which calculates the value of ‘pi’. She is convinced that calculus was invented by Aryabhatta and not Newton. She underscores India’s expertise in marine engineering, in that she says that when Vasco-de-Gama reached India his ship was about to collapse and it was repaired by Indian mariners. She also says that if Davenport and Vincenti are to be believed, ancient India had nuclear capability and to the effect there is compelling evidence that the Indus Valley civilization was not destroyed by flooding but by a nuclear warfare.

The lack of self-confidence and productivity of the Indians can be attributed to the fact that India for at least two centuries was under constant assault and humiliation. This humiliation did not offend the Hindus alone but some sensitive Muslims as well. In this regard, it would be in order to quote three great Urdu and Persian poets, i.e. Mirza Rafi Sauda, Mir Taqi Mir and Pandit Chandra Bhan.

Says Mirza (18th century)

Tod kar butkhana Masjid to beena ke toone sheikh, Brahmin ke dil ki bhi fikir hai tameer ki

(Sheikh, when you destroyed the temple and built the Mosque, you destroyed the heart of the Brahmin as well, can you rebuild it).

Says Mir (1710-1810)

Mat ranja kar kisi ko apne to etequaad

Ji dhaya ke jo Kaba banaya to kya kiya

(Don’t inflict grief on anyone, if you destroy the heart and build Kaba, what great have you achieved).

Says Pandit Chandra Bhan (1582— 1661, Persian Poet and Minister of Dara Shikoh)

Bibin Kaaramat-i-butkhana-e-maraey sheikhKi chun kharab shawad khana-e-khuda garden

(Look at the miracle of my temple O Sheikh. When it is reined it becomes the house of Khuda.) Note the similarity of Persian with Sanskrit. According to a Prof AH Abdi a scholar of Persian, Sanskrit and Persian belong to the same family and a proper scientific study of Persian is incomplete without studying Sanskrit.

The author also talks about caste system in Hindu religion manipulated by enemies of India. She questions that if Valmiki, a shudra, was a victim of social taboos, then how and where did he receive education, and how his Ramayana is accepted with reverence and devotion till today.

The book “Live for India” by Anshu Pathak raises those very questions that nationalists have reflected upon in various periods. But for these nationalists like Anshu Pathak, Indian civilization would have died like the Greek and Egyptian civilizations.

By RSN Singh