“When a man has begun to be ashamed of his ancestors, the end has come.”
(Swami Vivekananda in his speech on Hindu Religion and its common edifice, delivered at Lahore in 1897).
BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi while visiting Raigarh Fort said historians have been unjust to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj by portraying him just as a warrior and neglecting his facets such as a visionary king and an able administrator. Some historians with foreign thinking have also portrayed him as a robber. This is not the only myth systematically nurtured by the Anglicised-Marxist historians.
The first fallacy they have nurtured is, ‘India was never a nation’. It was only during the Mughals and especially under the British rule India found its unified identity. North-East India was never a part of India as it is racially different, Jammu and Kashmir was always disconnected from India and therefore has a separate identity, India consists of different linguistic nationalities and Aryans came from outside and ruled over the aboriginals of this land are some of the corollaries of this erroneous understanding. While doing so, India as a nation was stretched from present Afghanistan to Myanmar, the word Kashmir itself is derived from Rishi Kashyap, many freedom fighters from North-East fought against the British for protecting indigenous traditions threatened by the spread of Christianity, are the facts that are conveniently concealed. They forget to understand that India as a civilisation always had a common consciousness with the message of universal oneness. All the states in India with apparent differences in language and culture have a strong underlying unity of civilisational values which remained intact despite of repeated foreign invasions.
Equating whatever Hindu with Brahminism another fallacy that is conveniently persisted. Caste system is an aberration of Varnashram Dharma which was flexible and based on the principles of division of work is never told. There was a harmonious relationship between various castes and faiths, which is never highlighted. Most importantly, revivalist movements for rectification, such as Buddhism, Bhakti, Arya Samaj or Brahmo Samaj, were always followed by deviations from the true Dharma.
The worst contention of these historical fallacies is glorifying foreign aggressors as tolerant and branding whatever Hindu as ‘communal’ in the name of secularism, missing the fact that the real secular ethos, ‘all religions are true’ and ‘all ways of worships lead to the same God’, was always inherent in the Hindu Civilisation.
The real problem of these historians is they see India from the British prism and do not understand the true nature of Bharat as a civilisation. The indigenous traditions of pre-monolithic religions were ‘ways of life’ in sync with the nature. While playing in the tools of foreign hands the carriers of these fallacies not only distort Bharatiya history but also inculcate the values of self-denigration and derision. Swami Vivekanada identified ‘Disregarding self’ and ‘blind imitation’ of the West as the root cause of our colonisation. While concluding his 150th birth anniversary celebrations, we should carry forward his legacy of being ‘proud descendants of the most glorious ancestors the world ever saw’. Rectifying all the historical fallacies and restoring the self belief will be a leap forward in this direction.
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