Announcing ItihAs: Live Chat on Indian History 10th March, 8pm
Dear Friends: It is my great pleasure to announce the third online text chat this year – this time on “Itihaas”, covering aspects related to Indian history. As you know, the span of Indian history and its breadth is impossible to cover even in weeks, let alone the 2 hours we have on the chat..What we will discuss is therefore a selection of topics related to Indian History..
This will very likely be a 2-part chat. The topics that I intend to touch upon are:
- An Overview of Indian History
- Why Bother with History?
- What could be wrong with History?
- The History that is Not Told
- The History that is Distorted
- The Conspicuous Omissions
- The State of History in India and finally,
- What can you Do?
I will start by sharing some specific facts & ideas related to the sub-topics above. This will be followed by a moderated Q&A. Please use the hashtag #itihAs while mentioning this chat on twitter. This will help us aggregate & view the comments later..
“ItihAs: A Discussion on Indian History, its Omissions and Distortions”
Time: 8pm IST
Date: 10th Mar ’12 (Saturday)Please do leave a note below (via comments) if you have a specific question or wish me to address a specific point.
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There are entire categories of posts on Indian History on the blog if you want to read something by way of background…If you plan to join, please note the time and make sure you are online a few minutes before we initiate the chat.
You should be able to set a reminder in the box above by entering your email. Looking forward to seeing many of you online this Saturday evening…Jai Hind, Jai Bharat!
Past live chats are here (archived; can be “replayedâ€):
20th Jan ’12 on Youth, Politics and Systemic Change
3rd Jan ’12 on Illegal Infiltration and Impact on Demographics in North-East
29th Nov ’11 on Corruption, in conjunction with Indian Army Fans
5th Jun ’11 on Midnight Drama and Police Action at Ramlila Maidan
22nd Mar ’11 on Arunachal, Tibet and China
Here is an alternative link in case of any difficulties: http://j.mp/A9Hcpi
can I put in some questions ahead of the chat?
1. Will the chat be archived?
2. There is a big hole in textbooks between Gupta period and invasion of ghorids/turks, especially with regards to what happened around that time in central and south India. Could you address that in your chat?
3. Here is one question that has been nagging me for quite some time:
What happened to all the urban centers in India that were run over by turkic hordes? All people I know moved in from rural areas to cities in mid to late 1800s, none of people I know among friends/relatives ever lived in cities before that. So who were living in cities then? I am talking about the old cities (pre-english) like Hyderabad, Delhi, Ujjain, Mushirabad etc. So who were living there? All converts?
4. I observed among other cultures that there is a strong memory of a cataclysmic event and it is recognized/honored regularly. However, not so in India. For example, the battle at Tallakota, per historical records was one such devatating event. However, in popular memory in this region (where I am from), nobody seems to honor let alone acknowledge it. However, everybody remembers the king Krishnadevaraya. Why do you think this is so?
5. And why were some centers like Ajanta/Kajuraho etc were “lost” to the jungle till english found it? Were they in popular memory or were they simply forgotten?
Regards
I thought I would share with you about the review of this history book.
It is called
“Portraits of a Nation:History of Ancient India” by Kamlesh Kapur
Here is the link which reviews the book (reviewed by Dr.N.S.Rajaram)
http://folks.co.in/blog/2012/02/09/teaching-history-dos-and-donts/
Based on the review, one feels that it should be on every Indian’s (and NRI’s) bookshelf.
Thanks
@vv@ Quick response to your Qs (and thanks for sharing them):
1] Will the chat be archived? – Yes
2] I will request Sarvesh-ji to talk about this…
3] Let us see if we have time to discuss the urban centres; otherwise we will cover in Part II.
4] Re. Battle of Tallakota, can you please share any details that you may have?
5] Re. Ajanta/Kajuraho. I think they were forgotten as a result of being abandones by the people aroudn them (possibly due to invasions; possibly some other reason). But excellent question. Will try and address this too..
@Sumitra: Thanks for the link. I shall have a look.
How can i participate?
Sivanandan: You can login the grey/black box above with your facebook/twitter account and participate right from this webpage.
In case of any difficulty, you can also join via this link http://j.mp/A9Hcpi
123 commenting
Honored to join the discussion. Thanks Shantanuji and Sarveshji for hosting.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t join live due to time zone differences, so glad to be able to read the transcript. It is always a pleasure to read/hear Sarvesh.
In my humble opinion, one way to fix the Marxo-mleChcha-secularist subversion of Indian history is to make the unsanitized, un-engineered version of Indian history common knowledge. So for instance, among many other subversive concoctions, the secularists want us to believe that the jihadi Aurangzeb was a great proponent of composite culture and harmony and a friend of the Hindus (except of course those evil, ugly, bourgeoisie Brahmins whom he rightly chastized). However, unfortunately for these history engineers, there exists copious scholarly material which decimates their fantasies. Not to mention, records of edicts passed by the jihadi himself. The key is to make such evidence public by presenting it in a methodical, scholarly manner (not the PN Oak variety, but the RC Mazumdar, Sarkar, Shastri way) and educating enough people so it becomes common knowledge. If everyone knows that 1+1=2, then no motivated scum one can try to push theories saying 1+1=HinduFascist.
Organizing sessions like these are small but necessary steps in
(1) helping make the un-engineered history of India public knowledge
(2) helping awaken the generally historically-clueless Hindu masses on the importance of taking control over the study of our history and heritage.
Both mAnasa-taraMgiNI and bhAratenduH are educating and thought-provoking. I hope some day there will be an army of scholars in this nationalist-dhArmika mold in our colleges and universities while the Marxo-mleChcha-secularist complex gets consigned to the funeral pyre. Thanks to Shantanu for organizing this initiative. Eagerly looking forward to part-2.
Shantanu,
talking of Indian history, here are a couple of MUST-READ articles by a former IAF officer called Air Marshal Nehra on why hindus were beaten militarily in the past.
http://www.sify.com/news/how-hinduism-destroyed-the-military-news-books-kjnpc1febeb.html
http://www.sify.com/news/how-hinduism-destroyed-the-military-part-ii-news-national-kjnpu9iibhd.html
The above links contain excerpts from his book, “Hinduism and Military Ethosâ€. Its a very expensive book, costs 2500 Rs on Flipkart. If you have the money buy it, please. I personally can’t.But I do hope you and the other friends here read the articles – they really are worth their weight in gold.
Thanks Ranger…I shall have a look…
Adding one more book here for the record: “India A History” (Revised Edition) by John Keay