IF Pakistanis tampered cricket balls, the British seem to have surely tampered history.
IF Pakistanis tampered cricket balls, the British seem to have surely tampered history.
We are still reading the history that they wrote to 'suit their purpose' of inculcating inferiority complex among Indians, felt historians at a three-day international conference in Delhi on Sunday.
According to modern Indian historians, the theory that India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned Indo-European tribes from Central Asia around 1500-100 BC who overthrew an earlier and more advanced dark-skinned Dravidian civilization was propounded by the British to "devalue the ancient Indian history".
"There is absolutely no proof that the Vedas were written in around 1200 BC and that the invading Aryans massacred the people of the Indus Valley. Unfortunately, these malicious distortions are still being taught in our schools," said Dr BB Lal, former Director General of Archaeological Survey of India.
The historians described the Aryan invasion theory as "demeaning condescension that many Western historians have bestowed upon India".
A historian said we should immediately correct the past mistakes in our books.
"Books on Indian history sold abroad deliberately neglect our ancient culture so as to minimize and sideline its contributions," said Dr Kosla Vepa, Director of the US-based Indic Studies Foundation.
"At the same time, they try to whitewash the horrors that the British rule inflicted on India, such as the large-scale famines triggered by colonial policies. Changing the content of the text-books worldwide and especially in the West to correct these distortions should be our goal," Dr Vepa added.
Shivaji Singh, former head of department, ancient history, Gorakhpur University, rejected the oft-repeated charge that Indians were attacked by outsiders.
"Ancient Indians had a robust historical tradition that originated in the Rig Veda times and continued to develop and proliferate till the end of the medieval period, this tradition has created a rich and huge mass of historical literature that is unparalleled in the world," he said.
"You have to understand that the Indian sense of history is grounded in Indian culture and it should not be judged by the yardstick of how the Westerners write their history," he added.
In another major development, historians, for the first time dated Mahabharata to 3067 BC. Though the epic has been variously dated from 5000 BC to 1000 BC by historians, this is the first time that Narahari Achar, leading physicist, took into account the movement of planets excluding the comets to reproduce by simulation the astronomical references given in the Mahabharata.
