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A LETTER FROM GRANDPA
Distorted Indian history needs to be rewritten
BY NIRANJAN SHAH
My dear Nikita and Sanjna:
Before departing to India after a two-month teaching stint at Harvard University, the Janata Party President Dr. Subramanian Swamy address-ed the inaugural meeting of the scholars of the newly established Center for Indic Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. The Center in which the University’s Professor Dr. Balram Singh and Rajiv Malhotra of the Infinity Foundation are its driving force, has already received an initial grant of $ 1 million to conduct research on all aspects of India’s civilization. In his address titled “De-Falsification of India’s His-tory” Dr. Swamy said: “At present Indian history text-books used in universities in India and in the US were first written by British imperialist-sponsored foreign historians and their Indian tutees. These books are completely and mischievously distorted, and since Independence these books have been updated by Communist-controlled scholars. Hence a complete re-writing of these textbooks is necessary for Indians to develop a healthy Indian identity.” Dr. Swamy urged the center’s scholars to consciously be aware, at every stage of research, the difference bet-ween propaganda and scholarship. “Scholarship,” he said, “must recognize ambiguity in data and be transparent in sourcing inferences by adequate references. He gave the example of Megasthenes writing in his Indica that the king in the capital city of “Palimbothra” was “Sand-rocottas.” Later British historians identified these names as Patliputra and Chandragupta, and declared Megasthenes to have been at the Mauryan dynasty capital.
But in Indian history there are two Chandraguptas, one of Maurayan another in the Gupta dynasty, and they were 1200 years apart. Moreover Sandracottas could be Samudragupta Gupta, the son of Chandragupta.” “Recently,” he said, “in the Supreme Court in the Rama Setu matter, a whole host of bogus translations of the Puranas and the Ramayana was off-loaded by the government. When the translations were challenged by him, the government had no answer.” Through most of my letters I have tried to de-falsify Indian history. Lord Macaulay said in his address to British Parliament, on February 2, 1835, before the war of Independence in 1857: “We would never conquer this country, unless we break her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her ancient culture, for if the Indians think that all that is English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture, and they will become a truly dominated nation.”
Max Muller, wrote in a letter to his wife in 1886: “The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3,000 years.”
Western scholars, in their ignorance and imperial arrogance, felt that when the Biblical age did not extend beyond 4004 B.C., how can Indians — the vanquished people claim and unquestionably believe that the world has no beginning and no end. From this notion, they smugly believed that the Indians have no sense of history and so their claim to hoary antiquity for scriptures and literature was untenable. On this totally distorted view of Indian history and culture, these scholars began to reconstruct India’s chronology and bring it into line, with their preconceived worldview. Sir William Jones stumbled upon “Sandracottas” in 1873, the name of a great Indian king in the annals of western historians. He was the contemporary of Alexander, the Greek adventurer, who had advanced up to the Indian borders in 326 B.C. He knew of only one Chandragupta, Chandragupta Maurya, as the most famous of the Indian emperors of ancient India. The Greek records mention the kings before and after Sandocottas to be Xandramas and and Sandro cyptus. The kings before and after Chandragupta Maurya were Mahapadma Nanda and Bindusar. The kings before and after Chandragupta Gupta were Chandramas and Samudragupta. The phonetic similarity is quite apparent for Chandragupta Gupta and not Chandragupta Maurya. The wrong identification of Chandragupta Maurya as the contemporary of Alexander vitiated the entire chronology of the ancient history of India, including birth years of Buddha, Mahavir and Achrya Shankara.
—Grandpa’s blessings
Niranjan Shah, a civil engineer from Baroda, who pioneered famous high-rise buildings in the city, is a broadcaster and a prolific writer. He will cover subjects like Indian culture, history, philosophy and literature, in his feature - “A Letter from Grandpa.” He has given several talks on All India Radio on these subjects. His interests also include production of plays and movies. He lives in Vestal, NY, and can be reached at nshah32@hotmail.com
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