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Why Indian History books MUST be Re-written??
(A Thread)
Indian history is mostly written from the perspective of Delhi or at most northern India, as if the rest of the country barely existed except as mere provinces.
(A Thread)
Indian history is mostly written from the perspective of Delhi or at most northern India, as if the rest of the country barely existed except as mere provinces.
The average Indian student, for instance, will learn almost nothing about the great Satavahana, Vijayanagar or Chola empires of southern India.
Unless you live in the northeast, you may never have heard of the Ahom kings who ruled Assam for 600 years and even defeated the Mughals.
This absurd imbalance needs to be corrected. Moreover, history is not just about the rise and fall of empires but also about other streams of history. Indian textbooks say almost nothing about the country’s rich maritime history.
The great influence of Indian civilization on Southeast Asia is barely mentioned, if at all.
We hear about groups who came to India as conquerors but nothing of people who came to India peacefully as traders and refugees—Parsis & Jews from the west & Southeast Asian tribes.
We hear about groups who came to India as conquerors but nothing of people who came to India peacefully as traders and refugees—Parsis & Jews from the west & Southeast Asian tribes.
The extraordinary history of Indian science is similarly ignored or, as some would argue, deliberately downplayed. There is more than adequate evidence that ancient Indians made great advances in metallurgy, medicine, mathematics and so on.
Most readers will be surprised to know that many well-known events and characters of Indian history are based on very thin evidence. Emperor Ashoka is much revered for having turned into a pacifist after witnessing the human cost of his invasion of Kalinga.
However, texts such as Ashokavadana clearly mention major massacres of Jains and Ajivikas that he ordered long after his supposed conversion. Far from being Ashoka the Great, the evidence suggests an unpopular king whose empire began to crumble while he was still alive.
Not only have mainstream historians built grand stories on wobbly evidence, they are also strangely impervious to the continuous flow of new evidence being thrown up by archaeology, genetics, climate sciences and so on.
We are still taught about the Aryan Invasion in 1500BC despite the fact that genetic studies find no evidence for any large-scale migration from Central Asia. https://www.news18.com/news/india/didnt-aryans-invade-harappan-civilisation-study-of-4500-year-old-female-genome-refutes-theory-2299677.html
Our history is just about Alexander, Mughlas, then Colonialism...then Gandhi and Nehru.
End of studies.
This needs to change..Thank you..
End of studies.
This needs to change..Thank you..
The source of this thread:- https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/BpBKNL0cr9Z7RAmCyMcMnJ/Our-history-books-need-rewriting.html
