EP-25 | History concealed Ghori’s, Ghazni’s atrocities; demonized Veer Savarkar: Dr Vikram Sampath

what your history teacher has probably told you in school they were just teaching what was there in the syllabus but to know that a lot of that is concocted uh you know history in the 7th Century he along with several others during his time ensured that the Arabs beyond that narrow portion of Sindh never managed to get to the mainland of India the herd's wives is taken away as I mean Mohammed bin qasim forcibly marries her the other one commits uh johar when Mahmoud of ghazni comes to somnath Temple and he is quite shocked to see 50 000 common Hindus all armed in some you know manner defending their Temple 400 500 of the family who were hanged from trees on deepavali and to this day the Monday they don't celebrate that's also a living history and despite that we do perverse things like tipu jayanti and all of that every year is like one generation lost and most children then don't read history Beyond say class 10 or 12. a i podcast with Smitha prakash today my guest is Vikram sampath noted author and historian whose new book bravehearts of Bharat has created a few ripples Vikram seven earlier books include two volumes of Veer savarkar which also generated a lot of interest Vikram has a doctorate in history and music Dr sampa thank you for coming to our Studios most honored that you're coming here to discuss your book and much more thank you smitaji it's always a pleasure to talk to you I'll be calling you smithaji if you insist on calling me Dr sampath I think Vikram works well enough okay so during the course of this podcast it's going to be Vikram which it is offline so um so you know um in your book you say in your new book which is a bravehearts of Bharat in this you say that India doesn't tell its story and as Sanjeev sannyal said and I'm quoting from that the manner in which Indian history is depicted as is a it's a long Litany of failure videos every battle we are taught about is one in which India or Indians have only lost we're made to appear as a nation of losers nation of losers before I get to your book I'm going to get to your tweets oh God yes I know see this is how I trick my guess because your your Tweet on savarkar you've written on wheat sarkar two volumes eminently readable though very voluminous I must say it took me a lot of time people you know doing the lockdown as dumbbells also for a lot so it's it's only if you have misconceptions or if you have if you're a serious reader of history that you know two volumes get consumed get absorbed quickly but anyway so your Tweet on uh on Rahul Gandhi you called him an imbecile so that made a lot of news why were you so angered I was not anger at Smitha it was just that you know I've been telling the same thing from the last three years that's why I put out another tweet you know giving links to all the interviews all the videos uh you know talks lectures interviews with almost all the channels of all ideological tilts left right and Center where we've been talking about this uh he wrote Mercy petitions he was complicit in Gandhi's assassination he was in islamophobe he was the reason for the two Nation Theory all this has been done to death and it's just that suddenly someone just comes up with the same dead horse to flog and then you know how the media Works immediately there are Panic calls from all the guest relations saying tonight eight o'clock there's one show nine o'clock there's one show and I'm really tired saying the same thing in autopilot mode it's like a broken gramophone record that I go on so uh yeah I was more exasperated and I think intellectually and mentally fatigued to take on this and I think uh he was just doing it for the sake of publicity who in his life is a very revered figure and he has an ally there for whom savarkar is a very revered figure they've been asking they've distanced themselves from that comment yes I mean there was a time when balasubthakre had said that manishankaraya will never be allowed to enter Maharashtra for the comments he made on uh the ships has been one party which has been consistently asking for the Bharat ratna for him much before the BJP also entered The Fray so I'm sure his advisors know the Dynamics and the poor Mr thakre is already you know surrounded with so much problems he's hemmed in from all sides his party has split why would anyone in their right mind uh embarrass your ally at such a going to their state when they've already had a split and cause this so and his son went and joined that Bharat jodo yatra and this was just after that so I really don't know uh who the advisors particularly on historical matters are because these are such juvenile comments that was I mean uh someone signing off as your most obedient servant uh we had Mahatma Gandhi signing off like that Subhash Bose that was the that was the template of the time the colonial Masters you were always addressing and I think everybody should have gone through the rigors of cbsc education system done this Ren and Martin and you know learned English the way we all learned it and it was that it's part of your thing you know that you write yours obediently or yours respectfully or yours yeah I may not have any regard for you but I have to sign off like that yeah and this is common sense and to make that a national issue just looking for publicity so I think the best thing is to ignore uh stupidity can't be fixed so there's no point so that was one reason I said I'm just done to death with this but I do again no but that again was oh he's running away from the Battleground I mean excuse me I don't want to fight this battle with such people I choose you've had Twitter spats with historians too right well historians not just Twitter's Pat Smitha even courts bats so there's been much more than that but I've always liked to engage with a wide variety of people uh in the long list of video links that I put uh you know on one more media Outlet we had a big face off with Professor Aditya Mukherjee a former jnu Professor with Shashi tharur Dr Shashi tharur in one of the conclaves so you know a lot of historians don't engage in debates and discussions particularly those belonging to the leftist uh you know School of historiography it's my way or the highway there's no it's never a dialogue with another person correct it's always a monologue but I've always had uh you know open conversation with people who have differing viewpoints but then they need to be some standards of discussion and debate if you actually bring the level of the debate to the lowest common denominator and then expect someone to rebut all this uh with people who have not read most of it and you come from a place of prejudice who come from a place of rhetoric I think it's a waste of time three years four years ago maybe I would have said yeah let's do it but now I'm bored of that okay so your book uh Vikram it's immensely readable thank you it's uh it's a lighter read from the savarkar volumes uh outdone myself in terms of the size uh one would think that maybe it's easier to write but I doubt it because uh you know to get all this uh research material on the 15 people that you code uh it must have been hard because it there wasn't enough research or it wasn't easily accessible right right I mean I think I was corned by my publishers they said after those huge volumes let's do a what my editor premanka goswami called it a quickie uh you know it'll be a quick read so just do this and 15 people the I thought the difficult part was only choosing who the 15 would be uh because you don't know it's more about whom you have to leave rather than whom you're going to select but I realized it was 15 times more difficult than the savarkar volume because as you said there's so little documented history particularly in English or whatever you have to rely on a lot of regional uh you know language literature oral narratives folklores uh all of that but it gave me a great I mean I traveled across most of the places that mentioned in India and met so many people and accessed a wide range of sources which was deeply Illuminating a lot of them I myself didn't know uh particularly like places like the Northeast which is a black hole I think when it comes to Indian historiography who even knows much about the home homes I was now coming uh all over Delhi there are Holdings now of lakshit we're having his 400th birth anniversary being celebrated in the coming week on I think on 24th of November is now thanks to the you know government of Assam and government of India we are at least commemorating that now yeah uh of course there was a medal in his name in the Army and so on but other than that the larger Indian uh you know mainstream history uh the homes who ruled for 600 years if you ask a little child can you name two a home rajas or one home Raja I'm sure nobody would even know uh so just imagine the plight of someone coming from the Northeast to say a Delhi or a Bangalore or you know to study and in their textbooks their part of the country is not even represented and you're reading that as the history of India so do they not even matter in the larger Narrative of India and uh what sort of uh you know um Unity are you then creating among people and communities which is the sad manner in which history has been written true Northeast has been uh you know completely uh ignored uh I'm going to get to the Northeast part but before that I want to just know first like how did you select these 15 people before I go to the regional you know I want to go from Kashmir right up till uh you know Karnataka so and from uh from the east from Assam I will come to church yeah so I want I will we will Traverse the course but first how the 15 it must have been hard right yes as I said I think it was more about whom to leave because my criteria were one was of course these are Tales of resistance Tales of Bravery where as you rightly mentioned you know I mean it's not as if we always you know covered in front of invasions we also won Wars so what were these wars who were the protagonists of this these wars making that sort of a list and also I wanted a large the time span so it starts from the 7th century and ends in 1857 with the uprising and then whatever happens after that is the Freedom Movement so I thought that was a good stop and geographical spread so traditionally those areas of India which have been ignored in mainstream Indian historiography the south of India both of us come from the south our stories also don't get featured we are still better off than the Northeast but you know we don't get that coverage yeah only vijayanagar that's it but I'm going to come to the cholas yeah yeah a little bit hardly yeah hardly but yeah go ahead yeah so that was the uh criteria the geographical spread and I think another important point for me was the gender balance again history has always been his story where her story never gets uh the due that it deserves yeah and so uh out of the 15 I've selected seven women and eight men so tried to balance balance that also so geography time span gender and the criteria was you know stories of Courage some are not I mean two of them are were not traditional Warriors they didn't wear an armor and burst into the battlefield uh ahilia by holkar and rajashree bhagya Chandra Singh of Manipur who I don't know even I didn't know this man existed before uh but both of these were civilizational warriors they uh we'll talk more about them later but then they United the con they're part of the country and ahilia by the whole country through culture through through spirituality at a time when the country was going through a decadent phase and uh you know invasions and all of that so I thought these two were important not just in terms of military courage but also I think civilizationally what were their contribution to this nation actually uh you know when you mentioned earlier by I'm going to come to Alia Bhai but Alia Bhai is thought would be the person I will read first that because it doesn't go chronologically in the book I thought I'll pick up Alia by because you know um curiosity but let's start with Kashmir now it was it was the most revealing thing about it you know when I read we tend to think of Kashmir as one part none of us think that it went right down till the planes so you explained to me or give me a teaser or to our viewers re-read uh listeners a teaser about this yeah tell me about it because I was I was like fascinated I said I'm telling you this because I'm sure there'll be some comments saying how ignorant she is but sorry yeah most of us Dynasty how many people know how many yeah yeah I mean very few would know at least we didn't have him in our growing up years in textbooks and this man was called the second samudra Gupta of India and kalhana of course in his Raja tarangini paints a very you know fantastic and exaggerated picture of his digvijaya campaign that he made across the entire subcontinent according to him was under kashmir's Supremacy which is a little exaggerated he says he almost crossed Karnataka defeated the rashtrakutas then went to the Tamil land defeated them then crossed the ocean and even conquered Lanka so which is a little uh you know there are no documents to support nothing nothing to you know triangulate that bit but then he had at least still what is today's madhya Pradesh Bengal odisha um yeah to to some extent parts of you know Assam Gujarat all of that and on the western side Afghanistan uh Tibet so all this entire span was the Kashmir empire under Lalita in the 7th century and we uh never heard of him and his biggest contribution in was the fact that he along with several others during his time ensured that the Arabs beyond that narrow portion of Sindh which they conquered after a lot of effort and dahar's family uh rajada there and his predecessor Chacha who was the founder of that dynasty ensured that the Arabs never you know had a free run he took them 60 70 years to capture after Muhammad bin qasim came and Beyond those little ports in Sindh and so on the Arabs never managed to get to the mainland of India why have we not told this story this is such a fantastic tale who held them back all of these people yeah there was yes then there was a Confederacy created of so many people bappa raval Naga bhatta pulocation vikramaditya dhanti Durga do even does it strike a bell in anybody's mind these were the people who ensured the Arabs but all of us would know who Muhammad bin qasim is yes and when they the invasion of Sindh happened that is by wrote Every child would know it would be a one mark question in some history paper but who are the people who ensured that they didn't go beyond that narrow part of sin no we don't we wouldn't talk about that so I rest my case that way that you know this is the history that's been handed down to us what's uh what was given to us I think by our Colonial Masters was further perfected by the ideologically oriented you know post-independent historians who uh made this their project as to how the history of India needs to be written so tell me a little bit about the fall of Sindh yeah and qasim yeah that's a fantastic tale and it's I I wanted to actually do a separate chapter only on Dar yeah because I think right from uh you know 636 CE they've been the Arabs kept trying to invade sin but it was only by 7 10 when that they finally conquered Sindh and that too Muhammad you know there's there was this uh incident of a of a a ship that was going from Lanka all the way to the caliph and that got stopped by Pirates at the devel port and the her did not stop it and so the caliph was enraged and he sent Muhammad bin qasim to invade Sindh and he comes with this huge Army and it takes him a lot of time to actually invade sin but the her is very overconfident and complacent because the in the past almost 60 70 years they've not been able to make inroads I think that was his falling and he comes in the open battle to fight Mohammed bin qasim and he's killed there and that what follows is a total plunder and for the first time I think the kind of Loot and rape of women a demolition of places of worship uh Buddhist and Hindustan lines is so widespread which probably synth faced one of the first times the kind of Rampage is there and one one of the her's wives is taken away as I mean Mohammed bin qasim forcibly marries her the other one commits uh johar and this is probably the first documented episode in Indian history much before padmavati and others where all the Royal ladies committed johar to escape the clutches of the Invader and the two daughters that's that was again a very fascinating story uh parimal Devi and Surya Devi who are packed off as gifts to the caliph and once they go there they hatch a plot and tell the caliph that you know we've already been used by Mohammed bin qasim and so we are not pure enough for you and the caliph is so enraged he doesn't even think and Mohammed bin qasim who's having a Victorious lap in India he's he's summoned back to be brought back sewn in a leather bag and so on the way he actually dies of Suffocation and once the news of his death reaches the two princesses they then tell the caliph that they lied to him only to take revenge for their father's murder and then the caliph is obviously enraged and the girls are also put to death but they managed to avenge the two girls despite being in the Harem and the Captivity of the caliph they actually took uh you know revenge for their father's Killers now uh you know you talk about Sati and johar I know uh I'm going to come back to uh I mean I'm going to keep coming to hell yeah you know like when you talked about the first known johar which has happened in Sindh with ahilia by her daughter commits yeah I mean she didn't but her daughter did what was that like yeah you know my that was that was again a very sad story that story it just it shook me I'm not a mother of a daughter but I'm a daughter I can well understand what it must have been or must have felt or the mother for the mother and she I mean despite all her Petty and her devotion I think her personal life was such a disaster yeah poor lady and the husband was a debauched man this khanderao who had several wives and but what is interesting is the father-in-law and daughter-in-law equation two equation who finds this little girl somewhere and he's so impressed by her erudition that he proposes to get her married to his son and then he takes complete charge of her education her upbringing all of that which is so rare I mean in 18th century India the father-in-law actually trusting the daughter-in-law more than his own son and after he dies in Battlefield when all the other eight or nine wives commit Sati he insists that he should not commit because you are the strength and you are the one who's trained in administration and all the politics of the time he's sharing those letters with her these are all documented and kept in the maheshwar archives uh and uh later on her son also dies and he's you know mentally imbalanced so there's no air and then she takes on the throne uh as the queen of indoor much to the uh you know displeasure of the peshwa's uncle raghoba who tries to use up the kingdom but she gives it back to him in style but I think the biggest uh problem for her comes when her only source of Sucker her daughter loses her husband and she decides to commit Sati and she pleads with her and there's a first person account of how she goes there and literally Falls at her feet and cries saying you're and the daughter says you are going to die in a few years and after that I will be left to deal with a life without a husband so I can't uh this is the right moment for me to take this Noble uh course of you know self-immolation and she goes away and this lady is supposed to cried openly someone who's never given to showing emotions in public actually breaks down and the first person account of a British chronicler who writes that and she locks herself up in the room for several months she stops eating she's yeah I mean she completely gets into a you know sannyas mode after that so very sad tale for somebody who is otherwise given to so much of uh you know charity Petty renovation of so many temples yeah sad personally you can't you can't go to Kashi you can't go any of these places okay let's talk about somnath yeah talk about the somnath idol let's talk about somnath and what happened there yeah that's again such a fascinating talesmith so when Muhammad of ghazni gets to uh Gujarat uh the chalukya ruler bhim Deva he's you know run away fled and so Mahmoud has a easy run through pattern goes to somnath and he's come specifically to destroy the idol and that's where again the subterfuge that you know modern leftist historians do I don't want to name anybody but then everybody knows who it is uh who keep telling us that this was not for religious considerations it was economic considerations that there was so much wealth in the somnath mandir and of course the the evil Brahmin who is uh you know hoarding all the wealth and all of that there may be some element of truth about the wealth in the in the temple but the fact that there was no religious consideration for it is bangkam because this is narrated by all of them right in their Chronicles contemporary and even later they narrate this whole thing that after passing through patan he comes to somnath Temple and he is quite shocked to see 50 000 common Hindus not soldiers of the chalukyan army but common Hindus all armed in some you know manner defending their Temple and their jyotirlinga and this takes him one week to kill all of them and then enter the Garba graha and all the pujaris come running to him and say you are a Lutera you want uh money so whatever money is there in the temple we will offer it to you just take it and leave and this guy laughs and says if I do that I will be famous as a Trader of Idols which I don't want my legacy to be called so I'd rather be called a breaker of Idols or but chicken and so he refuses the money demolishes the shivling and then it is of course pounded and taken away to Makkah and ghazni to be put on the footsteps of the mosque so that every time a faithful goes on the infidels religion comes down this is Chronicle first person account of the Court historians and today we are providing cover fire for that by saying no no it was only economic considerations and the kind of resistance one is this story of how 50 000 people did this now on his way back he wants to go back to ghaznif quickly after the demolition some of the Hindus try and you know lure him as guides his his he and his entire Army are thirsty they say we'll show you where water is and they take misguide him take him through a dry desert and then he suddenly suspicious and he asked them like where are you leading me to 2 and then they say that you destroyed our God and so this was our way of taking revenge on you and we want to actually uh kill you of thirst and that's when he finally slays them so this sense of you know Awakening and Consciousness that a a place of sacredness of our you know country of our religion has been destroyed was so Rife and people like Professor Meenakshi Jain in her flight of Hindu deities I think she beautifully Chronicles this whole thing that constantly this effort was there to keep temples were getting destroyed whatever was happening the shivlings were saved they were moving across geographies they were being hidden in Wells in deserts in all kinds of places and resurfacing so in mathura if something is being demolished it would go all the way to rajputana and find a mandir there or go to South India Falls walls in the garbage so that that you know even in Mysore I I heard that Hyder Ali wanted to break the chamundeshwari idol and so overnight when the priests heard of that they built a false wall and a false deity was installed and he came and you know destroyed that either it knows the nose yeah to defiled the way to see across all the temples in Karnataka yeah nobody wants to admit that you're writing a book on tipu I'm sure that is also going to rile a number of people sucker for punishment so that I'm sure you're researching on that and you know you're going to be coming to those areas where all those temples were destroyed where people were killed in thousands let let into the jungles into the into that thick tropical forest to be killed by The Animals yeah and the the forests were covered I mean we we've only uh as students of uh the central Board of secondary education and ncrt books we didn't read it of any of this yeah nothing I mean from because I'm from Karnataka I've heard from aunts and uncles who've told me this but none of my classmates ever knew and I was called oh you bigoted or you heard this from pujaris or somebody who's told you that's not true and yes okay maybe tipu was a great king in the sense of a conquest he he fought or whatever but this is also part of our history yeah I mean and it's living history uh the story of the Monday mayangas of male kote whom he uh 400 500 of the family who were hanged from trees on deepavali and to this day the Monday they don't celebrate Diwali the mangalorian Christians you come from Mangalore and that side you have the konkanis the uh and then the kodavas from coorg yeah the nyers of Malabar I mean there's so much of anger uh even now Korg I'm told a lot of people call you know disparagingly they call Street dogs so yeah that's also a living history uh and despite that we do perverse things like tipu jayanti and all of that uh only for modern political you know what banks and uh you know politics so which is sad I mean let that happen uh can't history and politics are so intertwined but I think his as historians as Scholars one needs to put out all the facts I mean this whole thing that if I tell the whole truth somebody somewhere is going to get offended I don't know why that happens when people talk about the excesses of the East India Company and the British no one is saying that it's going to offend the Christians of India right but it was not not the Christians of India but uh it was uh it was said at one point of time right because the the fear that the Brits will say no that that got over but as far as Indian history is concerned there's only been one section which had a control over our Tales over our stories and now there is another lot which is coming out at least I mean you guys were always there who were like you know there are stories of ours of India which have not been told but now there is a voice that you have yeah I just feel that that it's like it's like you've you're writing your text which nobody is reading nobody of consequence is reading but now it's being read I mean I mean their books are totally out of print now it's all coming back into circulation I see the entire RC majumdar's collection available for sale and that really warms my heart because history is a discipline which should thrive on multiplicity of opinions uh to have a single monochromatic narrative and imposed almost hegemonically on the entire nation I think that does great disservice to to the discipline itself yeah and even at the heights of the of imperialism when you know James Mill wrote his the history of British India and colored uh India and Indians as uncivilized and that the Brits got us all a sense of culture and civilization and it was obviously a colonial lens of looking at history even uh at that time we had a lot of Scholars particularly from Maharashtra who were putting these Anonymous let you know articles in newspapers called the first Hindu h-i-n-d-o-o the second Hindu the third Hindu who were rebutting James Mill and his uh you know thesis and that led to the Spurt of what is called the Nationalist School of historiography which so the the irony is in under British colonialism we still had a national school VK rajwadi and bhandarkar and so many others jaduna sarkar and others who came that time but post Independence in Independent India they went into ether anybody who does that is a sanghi is a you know communal bigot and all these kind of names whereas these are different viewpoints of looking at history it's a very normal course of historiography which in this country assumes all kinds of labels that we are under the payroll of someone I'm I'm I mean I get these kind of tweets I'm like please show me the money honey where is the money coming where is that paycheck which is coming from someone but there is um you see that historians are also you know so sharply divided yes uh right so there's the conservative lot and there is the what the so-called liberal lot and the Liberals are anything but liberal about the point of view of conservatives and of course you know history there is interpretation like in literature there is interpretation so um the the lot which had a Stranglehold uh over the narrative the historical narrative over decades they are feeling threatened by this new lot of history tellers yeah uh it's not new history it's a new way of telling our history finding those lost Tales now they feel that your Hindu supremists like you have said I'm just going to quote who said that you are correcting a biased narrative that has colored persecution of bharat's uh history yeah perception sorry perception of bharat's history is it it's it's it's something that is changing and it's making many of us rethink it's hard Vikram like you know you've what you've learned in school in college once it's embedded in your head to be told that what you've read is wrong you have to be open-minded to accept it it's hard to do that very true very true right I mean uh as you rightly said those growing up years your teacher is your idol and what your history teacher has probably told you in school poor thing I mean not his or her fault they were just teaching what was there in the syllabus but to know that a lot of that is concocted uh you know history has written extensively on this how when he was a part of the uh the ncrt committee uh then the the the national curriculum policy or whatever that was there it was specifically told that uh anything that is inconvenient truths should not be mentioned National integration Council or something they had a circular that came out saying this is going to harm National integration and you had that Infamous circular right which the West Bengal government I think 1989 uh brought out there were two columns called and ashuddho where all the textbooks of all the uh you know across classes of West Bengal under the leftist regime there any mention of invasions ghazni gauri aurangzeb that came under ashuddho and the shuddha version was it all had to be taken off you can't mention all this because it's going to affect today's society I mean why why would you want to hyphenate today's Muslims with uh with an aurangzeb and a ghazni your idea should be to tell today's Indian Muslims that they are not your role models and they are not someone you need to look look up to as your icons your you are actually hyphenating them and tell and to do this you're fabricating history whitewashing the crimes whitewashing the genocides the destruction which has happened over 800 2000 years so I don't understand where this need comes from to make a community feel secure you need icons of the same community and to even there if you do I mean a dharashiko is a better role model than an aurangzeb so you don't need uh people who will come and tell us from outside India the famous Infamous biographer of aurangzeb that he protected more temples than he destroyed yeah right I mean Hitler also protected more Jews than he killed so these kind of crazy you know nitwits come and become the voice of scholarship has no mention in at least when I was and I'm good you know when I knew that I'm going to be interviewing you yeah I got all these textbooks because you know I mean my thing goes back to when I was in school and uh after that when my children were in school and there was nothing and I've said this before uh in in interviews and podcasts and everything that you know um all we knew was that the South Indian kingdoms was a choice question and it was a three month Choice question so if you didn't want to top your class in history the three marks you could avoid so cholas we could just completely ignore vijayanagara architecture so that two marks you just learned vijayanagar architecture hundred percent it is coming so that most people read the kunji the guide and learn about architecture it's like you know like when you're reading about harappa you know Harappan civilization okay let's read about the seal yeah one question will come on the seal yeah right so or uh you are going to get a question on the sewage system yeah yeah the roads in there it was the right angles and you know all those things you're going to get that uh on Akbar you knew like then you read about Mahatma Gandhi from Salt satyagrah onwards everything you read Because hundred percent there will be a 10 marker there will be a five marker there will be multiple choice everything on gandhiji will be there so you'll read gandhiji in detail yeah now so I said okay now that he's coming class 10 India and contemporary word none of your heroes are there in this okay um I'm gonna come to uh okay this is seven is interesting okay so this is class 10 uh I'm going to come here is your uh I'm going to come to class eight and the others so um class uh 12 part 3 Indian history none of your heroes are here right class 11. None Of Your Heroes class 12. nothing nothing none of your heroes are here Class 12 another book themes None Of Your Heroes but you're yes I hope you're getting this yes so you know whose heroes are here yes okay no uh class nine uh there is a little bit of mention when we are talking about class nine this this one is only about contemporary so it's not there uh in this when we are talking a little bit about uh your class eight there is one or two when it comes to women and caste system when it comes but and then maybe a few people are mentioned but nothing much okay now we come to this class seven oh that's the interesting book I love that yeah for various reasons yeah so there is chalukyas here in a map right yeah I mean there's hardly any mention of I'm looking at this that oh these are the new kingdoms it comes under new kingdoms yeah right it comes under new kings and new kingdoms and then of course it has got everything about um what is hiranya Garba yeah you understand why it is written about hiranya Garba because it will be a one marker yes yes so somewhere let's put something which we can use as a thing but no you know what you talk about about the rashtrakutas and all which you talk about no they're all covered in that map in that map finish map this is how these people occupied this part of the and little bit about the administration and of course Vijay nagara is mentioned uh and then I mean oh in the in that too yeah a little bit no the just see uh all the coverage he gets is a photograph so 25 the entire book there's no description about who he was or what his achievements were just a photograph and a caption so that's all a child would read about shivaji Maharaj in India so when I mentioned this months long ago on Twitter about Indian textbooks and it's not there then I had a whole bunch of so-called liberal uh uh liberal supporting people who you know who turned around and said God knows which history she's read I've read cbse but yeah I've gone through cbsc systems some of them were Bombay based yeah so you know people who've studied in Maharashtra yes okay you've gone through State uh you know history books and in in your state uh boards you might have read a little bit about shivaji Maharaj and you know about it but as far as the national yeah cbse basically what we read was that he was a loser yeah I'm sorry you can sue me if you want but what we read about was how he lost yeah yeah how he was killed Maharana Pratap how he lost the haldighati yes it was an indecisive battle by the way and a few years later they actually the battle of the divar they actually reconquered whatever they had lost mewar that is not talked about no yeah we read about the battles which are great uh heroes or should have been our heroes they're Regional Heroes yeah then we lost the battles that they lost is part of central Board of secretary education and ncrt books nothing has changed right why are our new historians or I shouldn't say new historians but historians of repute who are now writing about are his Our Heroes why is it not been Incorporated why still that is a right question to the wrong person you have uh you know uh the ears and um eyes and them everything of the government and I think that should be addressed to someone in the government or not okay uh let me tell you that uh the first time that I could get through to uh somebody I did ask might as well mention it now yeah I mentioned it to advani ji and he was home minister or he had just become hominister in fact it was like they had just been sworn in and he was home minister and I took my son's history books and I showed it and I said these are the history books this is what is being taught up Yahoo guys garlic is there going to be any correction at all and he said murli manohar Joshi is now hrd at that time it came under hrd he's on hrd look and there will be a change and the incorrect depiction of our some of our Warriors some of our some some of the history narrative will be changed because how many years nothing has happened yeah I think I don't know now there's this there's a lot of talk of this new education policy and a national curriculum framework or whatever and there was this entire committee under Dr vinay sahasra Buddha who uh the Parliamentary committee particularly for textbooks and this whole thrust on unsung heroes and heroines need to be included but I don't know why it's taking so long because there is content there is material which all that needs to be done is incorporated because every year is like one generation lost and most children don't read history Beyond say class 10 or 12. yeah um they Branch out into other disciplines so the only brush they have with history or engagement with our country and its past he is only such a limited span so after that what you mentioned then it becomes a lot of unlearning and relearning uh so you've you've had an entire generation go uh you know not entire one generation several jobs that's what every year is like one one loss and they're they're going to have this further you know instilled in their heads as they graduate to college where I think the uh the content gets more toxic uh and more self-loathing and more uh you know you're looking at yourself with so much of derision I'm saying it's a very thin line Smith I think you know the I've mentioned it even in the prologue to this book that uh it can run down the slippery slope of jingoism and everything about our past is great I don't think it's that also I mean one shouldn't go that there was a golden uh Golden Era and then there was invasions and the dark era so that sort of a narrative also uh it becomes very uh very very problematic thing to to make everything that way correct and many I have seen many of these uh you know um literary festivals go down that path where you know in these two extremes that everything was in the The Glorious era was in the past yeah and then came islamization and then was our downfall and then the British came in this it's very reductive yeah yeah so I I think there needs to be the time has come where people genuine scholarship can be put inside a room people can sit across a table and have a grand Indian narrative as to what have what's been our story uh in the 5000 years or whatever of our documented existence uh and like China says until the Lions have their storytellers uh the history of the hunt will always glorify the Hunter and I think that's all we've been doing it's so well said yeah yeah so you know uh has not found I think the the lions in India have not found their Storyteller and that is the reason we see Indian history only through the eyes and details of all our Invaders but never of our native Heroes and heroines you know we talked about how the uh the shivlings were taken everywhere the Joe titlings were taken everywhere and saved and things like that um so when there's a lot that we have talked about and we have seen also it's a lived history of temples broken Idols chopped uh you know and like you said the jyotirlings taken everywhere prisoners slaves Sati johar there are so many so many of these instances of Loot and destruction uh you talked about how the slaves were taken or the the princesses were taken and kept in the Harem uh in spite of that there are some intangibles these were the tangibles of the jyotirlinga but some intangibles of culture and all have still survived how did they last to to my mind I think the very fact our strength was our diversity there was nothing called uh you know one religion one book One Faith one message the multiplicity in every every few kilometers I think there was a different uh Faith system and sanatan Dharma embraced everything uh from The Vedic to the tantric to the animist and shamanic Pagan rituals to uh atheism all of it was was accepted so if for an Invader to come and destroy if there was just one thing to destroy it would have just taken one blow but here they were you'd destroy one ten other things bring up uh and you know we're almost like the bijasur we keep springing up every time someone is uh destroyed and they uh the maximum efforts were made to destroy all our centers of learning whether it was nalanda and vikramshila all our universities libraries all of these were burnt down but a lot of our knowledge survived despite that because it was oral tradition it survived through Word of Mouth generation to generation you killed a guru 10 of his shishias were there who propagated that in whatever diluted form of course we lost out a lot of the original content but I think a lot of it also perpetuated and survived and that is that story of resilience of us as a civilization that deserves to be told and that is what when I say the grand Indian narrative needs to come it's not with a sense of false jingoism or false Pride it's a sense of genuine Pride history has that utility too to this other what why are we reading these stories of the past it makes no sense to anyone to memorize by Road who came after whom it has little relevance or you utility in life beyond I mean everyone is going to become a engineer or a doctor or an economist or something else a foreign policy expert where does all this help you I think this sense of identity the sense of self-worth as a nation as a people and the mirror that it holds to us I think that utility of History fun has as the goal and then sets out the how do you you know populate it with the stories and the anecdotes and the incidents that is what is needed to be done now in my view you talked about diversity and being you know it's all coming under that umbrella of sanatana now this is what is you know Hindus are accused of this is this that you co-opt all of this yeah and you are you are mitigating or you're you're just kind of obliterating non-metically sorry obliterating uh you know the specific identities when you talk about animism this tribal form of worship of gods you're also this is also Hinduism Jainism you're also offshoot of Hinduism so this the criticism is that you're this you're adopting you're taking over everything I mean that of course you know where I'm leading to about Kamala Hassan oh God I am going to so first both these are questions into one one is was where the Chola is Hindu afterward Kamala Hassan said in the debate that got generated and two about this co-opting all this because kantra has raised all this you know that um my part of the country by the way and we talked about Rani abaka we'll come to that also of Buddha that's how basically you know frankly I got to know only about Rana Rani abaka through some childhood memory of yakshagana that I saw as a child not from my history texts right yeah so now come to this cholas and about animism and tribal version I mean if the cholas are not Hindu uh I'm first of all this is such a useless comment which should have just been ignored like how I ignored Rahul Gandhi's thing but I'm glad some people didn't because that generated I think a lot more knowledge and curiosity and inquisitiveness about the children yeah and rest of India about the vindhyas who look down on everyone below the vindias as madrasis they got to know that you know and thanks what a Grand Empire yeah thanks to Pony and Sylvan there's a increased I'm told uh the the book itself is selling so much the opponians the translations and all that after this movie has come and this controversy that way helped but to say that someone who's built the tallest uh you know Shiva Temple bredeshwara and gangaikunda cholapuram and the temple there uh they were worshipers of all aspects of uh you know the sanatan faith I mean they their ancestor they called initially tiruman who was Lord Vishnu and then they called themselves as suryavanshis so they also propitiate propitiated the Surya and their family deity was this form of Devi called nishumba sudhini they had muruga temples ganpati was an important Motif in all the Chola you know flags and architecture and all of that yagyas were big yagyas mahadanas and all these were done by all the ranis and the rajas according to Vedic Traditions Sanskrit and Tamil were equally patronized those who could chant in both the languages they were patronized and these inscriptions the best part of the cholas is they've left so much of documentation yeah for a for a nation which has always been accused of not knowing how to keep its history uh right from al-baruni to everyone who said the Hindus don't know how to maintain their records the cholas have gone overboard my multiple copies of the same information on coins on Temple walls on palm leaf copper plates the thiruvalangadu copper plates which are there that has right up in Java Sumatra yes and Sri Lanka Maldives all of these and these mention all these rituals The Vedic tradition uh the these things that were done and all the different panthas within sanatan Dharma were appeased and patronized and today the Builders of the most beautiful and wonderful temp Hindu temples you call them as not Hindu I think that's what our other dear friend Anand ranganathan in one of his many witty comebacks had said so are you going to say that till the time oxygen was invented and named so people were not breathing what were they breathing so the name Hindu was probably developed over the ages or whatever that's again subject to debate some people say it's I'm going to quote from your book uh Vikram yeah you've written in this that they had eliminated all possible rivals on the eastern coast of the subcontinent captured Kerala with its many important ports of Malabar and occupied Maldives and Sri Lanka this put them in a pole position as a leading player in Maritime trade of Asia as they held sway over several major trading ports again no mention of uh the the Chola is about their trading Maritime ability I mean the the very Malay word today the Malay word of today Malaysia and Indonesia was divided between SRI Vijaya in the west and the kingdom of mataram in Java now these are tell me these are not Indian words these are not Hindu words these are not what is it what are these and you know to come back to the cholas yeah I'm just you know your the Chola thing other than uh you know the Kings the the kingdom itself it is so readable that part yeah and um the the living proof of that is what you see in Southeast Asia where there are so many Hindu temples the Hindu motives whether it's a you know ramley line uh Indonesia Muslim country where still you know the the the culture is still they have those Hindu roots and traditions Bali and all these places you see even uh Garuda yeah Garuda varuna yes you don't see Garuda and varuna uh there's Ganesha on the currency yeah well someone else here wants Ganesha on the currency but then we have Ganesha on the currency I think in Indonesia yeah a Muslim country so all of these Trace back to those times when we had so much of and all these were facilitated not through Colonial activity we never colonized it's only cultural influence and trade inspired by trade shipping and Maritime tell me about that also which you talked about the south kingdoms yeah which you talk about particularly the cholas I mean they have indeed detail mentioned how their ships were built and how they went in the high seas the different kinds of ships yeah different kinds of ships one the one which went only for seafaring and Merchant uh you know Activity one for battleships like a naval Armada and uh these the best part was at a time 10 25 CE uh when rajendra Chola attacked SRI Vijaya uh which is in uh the Malay Peninsula to actually have his entire ships go and attack 14 ports when there were no compasses and so on to know the direction how did they actually navigate the Seas so that also threw a lot of astrology astronomy wind directions that they studied in a particular nakshatra when the uh you know off in the Marga months when there is some nakshatra in the sky at that point the wind is going in this particular direction and this speed so then the ship leaves the port at this particular time then it is going to go and directly hit the port of Sri Vijaya I mean that kind of precision with which these people went and did what they did and the the cholas along with the fatimids in Egypt and the song dynasty in China we were almost uh you know Global Powers when it came to the maritime trade these were the three major Powers at that time when it came to the entire uh you know Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian trade uh but you know that that that aspect that we were an important global economic power and also military power is seldom emphasized in the manner it should be uh foreign students if nothing else you know that um read up pick up text pick up books uh which tell you that India was a maritime power what we did with our you know otherwise what we've only learned about European Nations then being Maritime powers or even maybe even if you move towards uh Egypt and you know there two Central Asian countries being Maritime Powers but Indian Maritime achievements are not talked about and maybe 500 years later the re-establishment of that Maritime par under chatrapati shivaji Maharaja and who I think understood the importance of uh you know Coast Guard built so many forts Coastal forts Across the Western you know concurrent and that entire Western Maharashtra region and that's why I featured kanhoji angre who was the circle of the the maratha Navy and uh if shivaji Maharaj was the father of the maratha Navy and probably Indian Navy we now have his Insignia also on the naval flag which is you know long overdue it was kanhoji angre who gave action to shivaji maharaj's dreams and though unlike the Chola as the maratha Navy never went into the high seas they were more like Coast coast guards what the European Parts would probably call Pirates but then they ensured that to trade in our country you need to get the permissions of the local uh you know power that be so be the Portuguese the Dutch or the English East India Company or even the siddhis who were there in that part of the country they had a very tough time with kanoji uh to to to to get access to trading on the western coast since we are in the Deccan I'm going to move to Karnataka and uh since you and I both are from that state you know um when uh when when I came to the I mean I I went back and forth so when I came to Rani abaka what I did not know for certain is that there were there wasn't one Rani abaka yeah there were four of them and each one was different and you know had different uh contributions to make and uh I this came as a surprise so maybe people who studied from Karnataka board knew about it but there's certainly no mention about her nothing that we read about maybe or something like that as students you could get but if you did not have access to a British Council library or if you didn't have access you did not know about many of the people that you mentioned and certainly not about Rania bhaka yeah so and also there were like you know I'm going to read out again as I said I've got these points which I've got marked out which I find so fascinating and I'm going to read out in this um about abaka as the uh the Warrior Princess you know this fierce battle between the Portuguese and abaka took place in one 555 CE and when the former Center former sent Admiral Dom Alvaro does Silvera against the queen with 21 battleships several innocent people in ulal were tortured and murdered by the invading Fleet attempts were made to desecrate the somnatha temple in ulal which was bravely resisted by the nayakas of abaka who died fighting for this cause and then you talk about launching a surprise attack on them are we still talking about the Portuguese abaka managed to kill General pixoto I'm I'm presuming that's the pronunciation and 70 of his soldiers the Invaders fled to their ships being thoroughly disgraced abaka followed in Hot Pursuit and killed the admiral of the fleet mascaranas along with the help of her 6 000 soldiers and the foreign army was forced to vacate Mangalore Fort would a brave lady yeah and her successor does something more heroic yeah in all these coconut chippu you put you know the ammunition and that's hurled at the in the middle of the night the RPG of then yes okay these were the grenades of them grenades and the entire Portuguese Fleet uh you know was burnt away that way and those stories traveled across the world apparently to the court of a Persian Emperor who talks about this incident of a small little principality in India whose Queen and her Army destroyed the mighty Portuguese Fleet and so uh one of the uh appear through de la Val whose Italian traveler he comes to India particularly then to see who is this lady uh you know who about whom the Emperor of Persia is talking about and so a lot of the uh the chapter of abaka is also first person account of De La Belle and what he saw about her how he of course thought that she was not at all pretty she was dark and obese and not the idea of the queen that he had you know cruel what he said and then he he uh calibrated calibrated after uh that that's very nicely depicted in that and he uses such crude words about her that it was she was dark and she was short and she was not wearing an upper garment yes but he did say that when she started talking he was fascinated yeah with that she was of nobility and she had such maternal concern for us for a stranger and a foreigner she asked him uh she asked somebody who's this guy he looks different and strange and then he started a translator helps them connect and he says I've traveled all over the world and she very lovingly asks him have you had suffered heart breaks which is why you're going you know to soothe your heart he had thought that she can't talk because she doesn't have teeth right I I found and that she was into black magic and killing her own kids yeah all kinds of tales that's again another thing against women rulers uh you know even across the world actually yeah it's a global thing that they've had that they were witches and if they were not burnt at the stake that's another thing I want to say you know we keep talking about Sati as an Indian phenomenon women were burnt at the stake burnt in the western world too yeah so it's not in just an Indian phenomenon anyway I digress go on so yeah but the uh you know um I was talking with sushil who's uh my producer who's also from Karnataka and are we saying that you know uh my I read about ulal yes but what is my memory of ulala what is my thing of ulal is like not a single place where it says okay Battlefield this is where I only think I know about I read about bangadi only in your think banga you know the kingdom of I didn't even know there was a kingdom of banga and all I've done is take a state transport bus probably from there to here but to think that they were these famous battles that were fought there yeah historic battles people who lived there don't know Vikram correct true which is the saddest part and in fact I I believe even the uh the Chota Dynasty uh to which a Bakka belonged till about a couple of decades ago even they didn't know that there was someone called a Bakka in their family it was some kind of a scroll or something that they discovered when I met The Descendants uh they told me that probably 50 years 60 years ago they didn't know they had some vague idea that there was some heroic lady but the details were unknown even to the family so that is how undocumented it just disappeared into something and of course the memory was kept alive thanks to the folk rituals but the historical details were revealed much later through some scroll which they got and then slowly a lot of Scholars started putting together Dr vasantha madhava and so many others in coastal Karnataka they they started piecing together information about this these ladies who are called abaka deviaru in plural in that part so it was never so the yakshagana the recitals that I have been to so as it child when I heard about Rani abaka and and I saw this this is my earliest memories of a yakshagana recital Rani abaka was mentioned in one of that but you know it I was told that this is Legend not historical fact yeah so somewhere in all these you know people that you mentioned somewhere this Legend myth mythology history all this is all blending yeah so where how do you figure out it's only that's how our history has always been written and I think uh that's been the Indian way of historiography what about that well that too I mean in the same context where you know you invoke not only a deity but also ancestor worship ancestors and also kings and queens and all of that and so while mainstream historiography may have been unfair to all these people there nobody can take away the lived experience of a folk performance uh where as you also remember that there is someone like this maybe the your textbook did not talk about her which is so sad but she lives on in memory I think now the time has come to also bring them into the scholarly domain and also document facts about them from whatever little fragments of story are left behind of all these people I think that um I mean in the prologue I talk about this shloka that is there about what history is in the Indian imagination you know um where it said that in a format of a story and for what purpose one is to achieve the four pillars of purusharta Dharma Kama Moksha and also upadesha samantham it has to have a didactic value to it there has to be moral value for society that which does all of this it is called as itihasa which it's also broken down in Sanskrit Isa it thus happened so I think it was a in the within that entire Cocoon of the story I think the kernel of the truth was somewhere embedded and it was up to the uh you know the the Seeker to actually get that out so the puranas the Mahabharata and the ramayana which are traditionally called the itihasa have such fantastic you know mythological Tales rajatarangini too I mean it has all kinds of fanciful tales and gods and goddesses and you know yakshas and this and that and all these stories are there but in that somewhere is also embedded the the historical truth and I think that's how our ancestors saw preservation of knowledge of all forms not only history I mean even mathematics and so on everything was written in a kavya format the role of the kavi the Maha kavyas that were written so they say the sulbasutras have the Pythagoras I mean the Pythagoras Theorem was inspired by the sulbasutras but if you go to the suluba sutras and see it's not a formula like the best a square equal to b square plus C Square it will be in some form Square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides so so they give the longer form of that but they're in a in a poem poem somewhere would be embedded this this truth of that uh you know mathematical equation so in everything we had a very different it was not knowledge had to be sought it's not so easily spoon fed to you so similarly History Two was written in kavya form it had to have this Katha yuktam it had to have some upadesha to society and that is how we wrote our history that's how you have written this also it's very caviar form it's there is a uh if I was to uh if somebody was to ask me what is linking these guys that you have picked the 15 of them I can't I can't actually put a tangible thing that ha okay this is what is linking them but then like you said that there is a moral to the story there is there is something linking them what is that magical thing that links them do you do you know of anything or did you pick them because there was some linking I think it just fell in place by itself it was really quite uh you know the way all of all of these just assembled themselves I uh after an initial planning and later on I say hey I think there is a mosaic that just got created you know without my active conscious uh effort into doing this of course as I said lot of other people got missed out but I think so there's an episode two which is after that okay so uh Vikram tell me about Sharda Pete it's so close to my heart I mean uh it there is a linkage so that's why I want to just ask you well uh I mean when I was doing this uh research on the Lalita chapter uh I saw that you know again the indic imagination of what a great Empire is it's of course you know all the opulence the magnificence of palaces and temples and all of that but alongside each Empire I think contested with another to be a center of learning and knowledge so even Lalita when he goes and conquers Yeshua varman and all these people he brings Scholars from that part to his court if the idol from the you know normally they say um Idols were destroyed even by Hindu rulers which is not true you would take away the idol of your opponent bring it back to your kingdom and build a much more magnificent Temple for the same Idol so you're not demolishing the ideal like the iconoclastic waves of Islamic conquest did uh whatever is precious to your opponent be it intellectuals be it deities you're bringing it back and giving it a better uh you know importance in your Dom Main and that's how you have conquered your your opponent so I think Lalita the kind of people and all these bhava bhuti the poet all these people who come to the Kashmir Court charvak sushruta uh the ayurveda this one and Atri Gupta is the grandfather of abhinav Gupta who begins this entire Kashmir shaivism school um Tantra Kashmir shaivism tantric this one Buddhism and how that influenced even the Tibetan School of Buddhism all originating from Kashmir astronomy astrology it was invaritably the center of knowledge and learning and that's why I think around the same time when ADI shankaracharya goes there and by then he has established the much that the four cardinal points of India south west north and east and then goes up to Kashmir and establishes the what is the sarvagna Pete the all-knowing and dedicated to Sharda who is the goddess of learning and the script there is also Sharda script of Kashmir uh so the Pinnacle of knowledge of civilization of culture along with material opulence uh you know Empires expansion going to all these different parts the importance of social knowledge which has been destroyed for that very reason that that I think had the quintessence of the Indian civilization to a large extent which had to be destroyed you have to break the back of us as a people I can understand that that was that was their aim yeah what was the what is the explanation succeeding generation hundreds of years that we don't tell our children this even today if we were to hold say a literary Festival in Srinagar will this come out I don't think so no right yeah yeah even today we don't talk about it yeah so that's what that's why I want you know stories which you tell in the book I just hope it inspires people to pick up and read about it read about even if you are from Kashmir if you are from the Northeast like oh yeah I I didn't talk about the Northeast so let's let's go into that let's go into the Northeast part when we talk about the home kingdoms uh the mateys let's talk about that tell me something about that before we conclude I mean the Holmes rule for 600 years yeah in Assam and they kept it largely an impregnable Fortress buying a couple of attacks near Joomla and others uh Assam was not conquered and the large part of western Assam which meal Joomla conquered during aurangzeb's time was within a matter of 10 years 12 years the the homes completely reorganized themselves built themselves from scratch under their ruler chakra and his uh commander lachit bharpukan and we have the Battle of Sarai ghat uh you know where the mughals were beaten black and blue and sent back uh Raja Ram Singh of Jaipur who's sent with a huge Army by aurangzeb to conquer the kamrup back he's defeated completely and this again doesn't nobody knows about now as I said of course thanks to all these efforts we have the 400th year of legit uh being said Divas being celebrated and himanta Sharma has picked it up and made it his life's Mission I think so I'm so glad she's so glad and I think he's also written to all the chief Ministers of all states that they should include one chapter of lachit in their respective uh you know School curriculum the entire details of from the Assam burunjis the the documentation uh in Assam is so uh so beautifully captured I was so uh pleasantly surprised to see what are called the burunjis which are the the Chronicles the multiple uh you know editions of these covering almost the entire span of their Rule and these have been digitized the previous Assam governments all of them have done a lot of work on restoration of this but why is mainstream what is mainstream first of all what is why is mainstream India not listening to these stories similarly the metis rulers I talk about Palm Harbor in the book nagaland and Manipur yeah yeah it spans yes I mean the borders are different from what they are now now so that entire region I mean was the one who introduced Hinduism in Manipur uh and then his successor whom I cover in the book uh Singh brings this whole vaishnav sampraday the manipuri RAS Leela that you see today then natasan kirtana all of that happens under him the govind ji uh Shri govindji in Manipur was established by him he offers his own daughter as Radha uh to the because it the idol of Radha could not be sculpted on time for the installation and they all wonder what to do and he offers his own little young daughter as and creates this dance form so while on the one hand he is also keeping the Burmese armies a Czech who are constantly invading Manipur there's a toss of the throne between the two mateys and the Burmese but at the same time he's also doing a spiritual and cultural Renaissance the name Manipur also is very sanskritic name is given to the kingdom by him and today if vaishnav you know satras and so on in Assam Manipur that entire region it's all because of you know these roots of the ahomes and the metis and these people so the civilizational heroes that I spoke of may not be in the traditional sense of going to a battlefield and fighting but keeping your faith alive and probably creating a Renaissance there in the wake of adversities and calamities I think that's where their contribution becomes so important but again we don't know much about them we don't read about them yes and so that's why I'm hoping that you know there is curiosity generated uh and people read and make up their own minds rather than being you know told that this is right or wrong read read about your cultural history read about uh something that you were supposed to be embarrassed about you'd have no reason to be embarrassed about that and I mean it's not I I think we should also mention our Follies it's not always that you know like I said everything about the past is great and we we were the best I mean the other extreme we knew the in nuclear bombs we knew everything I mean some of it is true some of it is fantastic so I mean too much of that exaggeration is also correct I think goes on the Looney path so I think a balance is needed yeah where things about ourselves our ancestors their achievements we were not sitting idle for five thousand years six thousand years doing nothing so what were the knowledge systems created what were the achievements we had what were the take Tales of courage and resistance we put that famous couple it is thrown at us right what is that kuch it's not of course the spiritual strength of this civilization but along with that there was also military strength just through spiritual resistance you can't stay alive for so many even all other civilizations of your own time have actually collapsed so I think that story of this country is dying to be told and to quote that uh famous speech this the soul of a Nation long suppressed I think needs to find utterance now when there is a genuine Reawakening among Common People of India irrespective of the political dispensation of who's in power and what I mean today I think the common Indian has awakened uh and they're asking questions and that is what Riles a lot of status quo is and establishmentarians who do not want the subaltern to speak so um Vikram before we conclude uh this is uh since we are three uh sitting out here so she my producer is also here so we're going to put one controversy a historical controversy yeah I'd say you since you're the historian yes the historical controversy to rest and this is for you Anand right we're going to have Mysore Park out here and I have a historian here who's going to tell us Mysore Park Karnataka of course or Tamil no way Tamil it is and I mean we we know the story it was an albedi krishna's Court where I mean I think he wanted suddenly he said I want to have something sweet to eat and the cook did not have anything else to do so he just cooked some you know jaggery and this and that and he put some besan powder and made some random dish and brought it to the Maharaja who loved it and said what is this called so he said my suru Paka the Paka the the entire this one that is sugar sugar and that's how the Mysore Park was born and these the millions other than kaveri water they also wanted myself not done now by the way I'm half a million to be honest and half a maharashtrian so we are not working together side might actually disown me for doing this but then to spite Anand anything anything right here so let's let's God on the Mysore Park in this in honor so I'm gonna have my editor also come in he's from Kerala Anand so he's he's the neutral guy now you come so we're going to have to like like the heroes and heroines of our book um we've created this alliance with yes other states against the common enemy so come now you are going to you are going to have so now Kerala is with us yeah right so we're building the alliance are there any other states no but this is Mysore Park and Mysore Park is so on that note on that throwing the gauntlet on that sweet note and after throwing the gauntlet and I'm 100 certain that Anand is going to go on on a television network forget about a podcast you can go on a television network and put us down but then we have decided that Mysore Park is right right Karnataka right thank you Vikram so much thank you so much for writing this book and for coming and speaking on the AI podcast thank you Smitha such a pleasure and thanks for the Mysore Pak and thanks that we settled it the historical debate once for all I'd already settled it in coimbatore when Anand and I were there but I think this is more on records absolutely absolutely we only factual stuff yes right thank you thank you thank you very much okay thank you for watching or listening in to this edition of ani podcast with Smitha prakash do like or subscribe on whichever Channel you have heard this or seen this namaste foreign [Music]

Channel: ANI News

Views: 1,287,997

Keywords: dr vikram sampath, vikram sampath podcast, vikram sampath ani podcast, vikram sampath latest podcast, ani podcast, veer savarkar, ani podcast with smita prakash, podcast with smita prakash, hindi podcast, podcast, latest podcast, smita prakash, ani podcast smita prakash, ani podcast vikram sampath, vikram sampath in podcast, smita prakash podcast, latest episode ani podcast, latest ani podcast, podcast hindi, news, ghori, ghazni, ani news, veer savarkar vikram sampath, savarkar

Id: RYB5fK6VSt0

Length: 84min 11sec (5051 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022