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TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Welcome
सवागतम
 
Bien Venue Herzliche Willkomen
Dr. Jagmohan, Professor Braj Bhasi Lal, Chairman ShivajiSingh, Distinguished Delegates to the ICIH 2009 from thesubcontinent and other continents, my Bharateeya mitr, andthose who could not be with us today , I extend a heartywelcome to you on behalf of all the volunteer members of the ICIH 2009, and the ISF . I greet you in the same manneras we have done from time immemorial with a
Namaste
It is indeed a privilege and a signal honor to welcome you allto the International Conference on Indian History (ICIH 2009)the first of what we hope to be many future conferences thatwill allow us to discuss issues freely and fearlessly, andexplore the rich and varied tapestry that forms the majorpart of the Indic History and Civilization. There is clearlyburied within my innermost self the desire to tilt atwindmills, just as the hero Don Quixote de la Mancha, in theclassic tale by Miguel de Cervantes’ felt the need to do justthat. The reason I say that is, our goal remains the changingthe content of the text books worldwide and especially in theEnglish speaking countries, that deal with the Indiccivilization in so cavalier a fashion. Our estimation is that asignificant proportion of the Indic Diaspora has experienced,the demeaning condescension that many English historianshave bestowed on India and the Indics, starting from JamesMills to Sir Penderel Moon. I mention this to emphasize thatthis is a problem, not just of a particular geography, but alarge part of the World. There are some, I concede, that feel our Civilizational History,provided that it is correctly depicted, is indeed a closed book and nothing more needs to be said about Indian History andthat for a host of reasons, any attempt to correct it is futile
 
and would lead nowhere. I beg to disagree. Even a cursorylook at the current History books would disabuse us of such anotion. A typical book of Indian history would deal with theentire history of India prior to the Common Era within thespace of 20 to 100 pages, and would spend the next 100pages for the less than 200 years of Mughal rule, and another100 pages on the British colonial period which lasted just atad under 200 years. If my remarks suggest that such acavalier treatment is only extended the ancient era , that isclearly not the case. The Vijayanagar empire which is arelatively recent occurrence is vouchsafed the same degreeof neglect, even though it lasted longer than the Mughalempire, see for instance, the book by John Keay
1
whichdevotes a scant 3 pages to the Vijayanagar empire.Assuming such weight-age results from lack of knowledge of our past, this merely reinforces my point that much work isyet to be done in deciphering the Indic past. But if suchneglect of our Ancient era has been a deliberate act tominimize the contributions of the ancient Indic, it is a farmore serious matter indicating lack of integrityThis pattern is strikingly similar in a large number of books.If we make the generalization that this applies only to bookswritten by Englishmen, a quick look at what is there in othercountries reveal to us that, alas the picture is no better,such as for example when one looks at a book written forGerman readers by Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund.Clearly, notwithstanding the great rivalry that the Germansexhibited towards the British during much of the 19thcentury, the overwhelming feeling you get when you readKulke and Rothermund is one of empathy for the British forassuming the burden of civilizing the natives of India. Thereis the customary obfuscation and omission of manyegregious acts committed by the Colonial Overlord duringtheir tenure as a self appointed guardian of the Indicpeoples. To those millions who died in the seventy faminesthat occurred during the Colonial era, such a sanitizednarrative is not only a mockery of the truth but a grotesqueperversion of history. There are exceptions to be sure, suchas the monumental work done by Will and Ariel Durant butthey are rare. To be charitable, and this is not an instancewhere charity is warranted, we will assume Napoleon’sdictum to be true, that we should attribute not to malice thatwhich is more easily attributable to incompetence.Even the most painstaking effort at the Historical narration
1
John Keay, “India – a history”, Grove Press, New York,2000
 
of a people is a process which often reduces the multifacetedcivilization to a much lower dimension, where if care is nottaken, we come away with the feeling that the only importantfeature of a land was the chronology of the Kings and thebuildings and monuments that they left behind. We do notexperience the vibrancy of events as they first unfolded andthe fact we are almost certainly witnessing a large scaletitanic shift in paradigms, and values, that is the essentialingredient of the Shiva Tandava, the quintessential Hindumetaphor that represents the daily rhythms of birth , life andof death. Why is this ? In my view this is so because for themost part the modern treatment of Indian history in thehands of the occidentals and their parampara in India is sobanal and is often reduced to the prevailing mores of politicalcorrectness. This is the case, even when the narration is freefrom egregious errors. When there is little attempt atauthenticity, and every issue becomes a test of loyalty to apolitical dogma, the situation is far more dire. All pretence atmaintaining the accuracy of the narrative is abandoned, andthe sole criterion is preserving this extraordinary degree of political correctness. There are exceptions to this vast oceanof banality , as exemplified by the work of a few, amongwhom we count the Chairman and the inaugural speaker. We will begin at the beginning and ask ourselves why wewould study history at all .
Why study history at all
The traditional discipline of History is one that tries toanswer the following questionWhat was saidWhat was writtenWhat was physically preservedThe earliest oral record of a history is that of the Veda (theterminus ante quem we believe is 4000 BCE) and the earliestwritten record is the Cuneiform of 3400 BCE.Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must,to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. Whenwe study it reasonably well, we acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affectour own lives and as a result emerge with relevant skills andan enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical
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