Home > 2004 Issues > February 29, 04

History as a tool for damnation BEFORE I write about the book, let me ask a question: ?What's history?? History should be an accurate rendering of events and facts of that particular period which is being written about. It should not be an interpretation of the events of the past to suit a predetermined theory already housed in the historian's mind. Since the late eighteenth century we have been fed on Western scholarship, for whom the recorded history of India goes back only five to six centuries before Christ. It is this point which has been well highlighted in the book under review?The Origin of Human Past. The author has quoted equally well what the European Indologists had to say on the subject. He has quoted William Jones, who in AD 1774 arbitrarily concluded that ?the first ages of the Hindus were chiefly mythological and thus the historical age of India can not be carried further back to 2,000 years before Christ.? Several others too, like Wilson, Max Muller, Buhler and Cunningham subsequently stressed that ?no date or public event can be fixed before Alexander, that is, 326 BC?, without any evidence. This could also be because Western scholarship was influenced not only by prevalent European historical and philosophical methodologies but also colonial interests. The fact that the history of India before this period has been very conveniently ignored by European Indologists forms the basis of this book. An outstanding feature of this monograph by V. Lakshmikantham is his effort to ridicule the Western historians' pronouncements that Dravidians had been invaded by the Aryans of the Rig Veda in the second millennium BC and that there was serious antagonism between the north and south of India. He explains how the British, by the middle of the ninteenth century, overburdened with increased administrative responsibilities due to their spreading empire and reeling from the revolt of 1857 by Indians, appointed two commissions which reported that the Brahmins were the main cause of the mutiny and thus decided to target this class. John Mills wrote that there was nothing to be proud of in India's past, that Hinduism was trash, that Sanskrit was no language at all but was coined by the Brahmins to exercise their superiority over the rest. It is interesting to read how the British appointed the German Vedic Scholar, Max Muller to translate the Rig Veda who, along with the others recorded that India's history went back only five to six centuries before Christ, ignoring the fact that there was traditional prehistoric events through Puranas and Itihasas describing the civilisation and social life of the people of India. The author has successfully countered the Western arguments for propounding the Aryan invasion theory for discrediting not only the Vedas but also dubbing the Aryans as settlers when the Sapta-Sindhu area between the Rivers Saraswati and Drishadvati was Bharat and home of the Aryans who diffused in different directions all over the world. The second important highlight of the book is that the chronology of ancient history was deliberately reduced by more than 1200 years by the West ?to erroneously identity Chandragupta Maurya (1534-1500 BC) as the contemporary of Alexander (356-323 BC), whereas it was actually Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty (326-320 BC). This thus resulted in the placement of other important events and personalities to fit the framework of the reduced chronology.? Lest it be misunderstood, I wish to point out that we need not reject outright what we have learnt so far of India's history from foreign sources or assimilating each and every argument put forth by Dr Lakshmikantham. What needs to be said is that all history should be taken with a pinch, nay a bigger dose, of salt, more so if it has been written by or for the ruling class of that particular period. It however goes without saying that this monograph by Prof. Lakshmikantham, a professor of mathematics and a researcher, merits to be read seriously to get a glimpse of India's historic past which has been ignored by historians for reasons best known to them; but more so that this study comes at a time when the nation is rediscovering its identity and reclaiming its pride of place. ?Book reviewed by Manju Gupta The Origin of Human Past by V. Lakshmikantham, Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, Rs. 340.00, pp. 362

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