Mr. Rahul Dewan: So I ve just returned from
a week long...my first solo backpacking trip to Hampi and Kishkindha and you know this
is the Kish [applause] [laughter] this is the Kishkindha of Ramayana, and this is-this
was the kingdom of Vali, this is where Ram met Hanuman and you know you could argue that
all these places Kishkindha and Panchavati have been retrofitted into the Ramayana and
the at the time and that those guys could not have known the history of, or the geography
of this country. But you know Sanjeev and his book, Land of Seven Rivers argues that
Valmiki s hypocritive description of Hampi [hand gestures] you know how he describes
it and how the place is, there is no way Valmiki could not have known that place first hand,
or you know either through traders or having seen it himself. Further there is a sloth
bear sanctuary just 30 kilometres from Hampi and you might recall Jambavanta, Hanuman s
sloth bear friend, so there are too many [hand gestures] sort of coincidences if you like
you know, for this story to be retrofitted or made up and all of this right? And you
know Sanjeev also argued that Hanuman could have been a Neolithic tribe part of a Neolithic
tribe which could have used the monkey or the langur as a totem, and they need not be
monkey-looking people, they could be forest dwellers, Vaan-Nar . So and you know LOSR
got-land of Seven Rivers-if I remember correctly, is dedicated to your kids and you ve written
so that you may know where you came from. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah.
Mr. Rahul Dewan: And to be honest, that s the journey that this man [gestures towards
Sanjeev] sent me on, to find out and connect me to the roots where I came come from. And
this was not the first trip, last year I was in Cambodia sitting on the footsteps of Angkor
, part of the Angkor Wat temple and reading page 74 and reading about how Indian entrepreneurs,
you know from India, from Bengal travelled all over and spread the influence of Indian
their Indianized cultures and spread Hindu Buddhist temples in South East Asia. So that
s the effect of Sanjeev s storytelling on me. Sanjeev is the chief strategist
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Was [laughter]. Mr. Rahul Dewan: And managing was the chief
strategist and managing director of Deutsche Bank, and he was one of the top economists
in India. He is being involved in urban planning yes and you know my observation in one of
his books is about India s inevitable urbanisation. In my, last week about 7 to 800 kilometres
I had Karnataka buses on small towns all over the place from starting with Hyderabad actually
and then I had gone to Belgaum. I did not find any romantic [hand gestures] ideal villages.
I found thriving urban centres, dusty, honky, bustling with people. I found markets which
were selling everything from equipments to modern kirana stores and at the same time
rural sabzi markets, all alongside the other. So from you know really a very idealistic
Gandhian [hand gestures] go back to villages kind of narrative Sanjeev has offered, at
least for me a very a powerful narrative of India s economic rise after a thousand years
of decline which incidentally is his first book and I relished it unputdownable. So his
powerful storytelling and his uncanny ability to connect events which are separated by several
millennia really what has given me a new sense of renewed sense of purpose and this event
is you know to be honest an expression of that sort of sense of purpose. This was a
you know I really have to say this and not make it a [laughter] actually Sanjeev so,
over to you. [Applause]. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Thank you Rahul now I
ll have to live up to it [laughter]. Thank you very much. The topic of today is to what
extent is Indian history really true. And the genesis of this really come from a statement
I often hear, particularly from educated people, that Indians are somehow an ahistorical people
i.e., that we do not for some we are unique in the world and not caring about our past
that now this is a really astonishing accusation to make about what is arguably the world s
oldest continuous civilisation. Here are our people who in normal conversation will throw
up idioms and ideas and names and that appear in epics that are from the Iron Age. Everyday
tens of millions of Hindus will chant the Gayatri Mantra which was composed in a very
ancient form of Vedic Sanskrit in the Bronze Age you know depending on who you ask between
3500 and 5000 years back. So clearly, we are if anything people obsessed with the past,
obsessed with the continuity of our civilisation and it s something it s a continuity that
I will we will discuss we have bought with blood. So surely it is strange that we should
be accused then of not having any interest in our history. If we were not interested,
I would not have been able to fill out [hand gestures] this room at all. So what is the
real problem? And I would argue the real problem is intuitively we know that the history that
we are taught, the history that is there in our textbooks is actually false and because
we know intuitively that it is false, we tend not to have too much respect for it. So really,
the issue really is what extent is it false or by converse true and the second question
of course is then how do we then begin to tell the story in the so-called correct way.
Now there are many reasons why our history has been mangled as it is presented to us
today and I will get into some of them not all of them because it will take way too long.
But one of the very very important reasons why our history is fundamentally flawed in
the way it is presented to us is that it is not our history at all. It is really the history
of our of foreign invaders. It is the history of the invaders writing the history of their
invasions. And therefore, when you read Indian history, it is a long litany of battles that
the Indians lost. So think back to your history books that you have read or had to study at
university or college-or school and its about the three battles of Panipat, its about the
Battle of Plassey and the Battle of Buxar. But you never read anything about the battles
that the Indians won. In fact we won quite a lot of battles if we will go back and dig
up our history for the very simple reason we know that, for the very simple reason that
we are still here and we have won this continuity of our civilisation as I pointed out through
spilling a lot of blood and we won quite a lot of times and that is why we continue to
exist because it was not as if those who invaded us did not try to forcibly change and dominate
us. So let me name a few battles through history that many of you may have never heard of but
are actually major events in Indian history. Now you ve all heard of Mahmud Ghazni and
how he invaded India 17 years for 17 times over 25 years. Now if you read an Indian history
book you will get the impression that Mahmud Ghazni came, he invaded 17 times, a few years
passed and then and then Muhammad Ghori came in, he defeated Prithviraj Chauhan and then
you know the gates of India opened [hand gestures] and we were conquered in one shot. In fact
nothing of that sort happened. There is a gap of one and a half centuries between Mahmud
Ghazni and Muhammad Ghori. [hand gestures] Why is there a 150 year gap between the two?
The reason for that is that in 1033 A.D., a very large Turkish army charged down from
Afghanistan, across the plains, across into the Gangetic plains and was met by a much
smaller army led by a bunch of local chieftans from from that area near what is now Faizabad-Ayodhya
area and they fought a big battle and the Indian side was led by a chieftan called Suheldev
Vasukdev Pasi. And in that battle, the Turks were completely destroyed. They were destroyed
and decimated to such an extent that they did not dare come back in for another 150
years [hand gestures]. This army was led by Mahmud Ghazni s nephew who was killed in that
battle. There s still a Masud to him in Bahraich. This is the Battle of Bahraich in 1033 A.D.
Now no Indian textbook will tell you about this. The only people who remember about this
are the caste from which Suheldev Pasi came from the Pasis themselves but other than that
pretty much nobody else remembers this. But this is not the only example. If you re not
happening if you don t happen to be Assamese, you re probably entirely ignorant about the
fact that the Mughal Empire at its height was defeated by the Assamese in a place very
close to Guwahati called Saraighat by a home General called Lachit Borphukan. He was one
of the great Generals of Indian history. He managed somehow to coax the Mughals who were
basically cavalry and artillery guys to fight a battle on the Brahmaputra where obviously
the Assamese had a huge advantage because they were locals and he essentially sank the
entire Mughal fleet on the Brahmaputra. It was a completely devastating [hand gestures]
defeat, the first really big defeat that the Mughals had faced in India since Humayun came
back to rule Delhi. And it was absolutely devastating after that essentially the Mughal
Empire began to fall apart and you have of course the Marathas, the Bundelas and others
who took over the Mughal Empire very very quickly thereafter. Again, as I said, you
probably unless you re Assamese have never of this Battle of Saraighat or Lachit Borphukan.
In fact, many of you may not even have heard of Bajirao Mas-Bajirao till this movie Bajirao
Mastani came through, and yet he is one of the great Generals of Indian history. The
British did not conquer India from the Mughals as our history books will give you suggest
to you, they actually conquered it from the Marathas, who for 75 years ruled over at least
two thirds of India. In fact Bajirao s son Raghunath Rao I think his name was, ruled
over an empire that was larger than that of Akbar. And yet he is simply not there in any
of our history books. And then of course if you don t happen to be from Kerala, you ve
probably never heard of Marthanda Varma. Now Marthanda Varma is an extremely interesting
character. He was the ruler of what was then a very very small kingdom [hand gestures]
called Travancore or Venadu which is a very he extended it but when he came to power it
was essentially a principality smaller than what is now Delhi state. And he decided to
take on what was then the biggest empire in the world which was, oddly enough forgotten
now, the Dutch Empire. The Dutch were the most powerful maritime power in the early
18th century. They had already taken over what is now Indonesia, they had taken over
Sri Lanka and now they were attempting to take over India when they were confronted
by this very tiny kingdom ruler called Marthanda Varma who defeated them in a battle at a place
called Colachel which is just north-north-west of Kanyakumari. And if he hadn t defeated
him its very likely that I would have been giving you this talk in Dutch. So these are
just a few of the very important characters in Indian history who are simply edited out
of our history. Now why is it the case? It is the case because very simply the foreign
rulers who ruled over India for the last 800 years or so wrote history from their perspective
which is only naturally to be expected. They wrote history but the they wrote consequently
wrote about one they edited out the bits where they were being defeated so consequently those
bits were underplayed but they also layered and layered [hand gestures] upon it their
own ideas and thoughts and so on. And the depths to which this has now percolated even
into our own consciousness is quite amazing. Now it is not unusual for a conqueror, or
particularly a conquering culture, not just conquering individual but a conquering culture
to promote everything that came before them as the age of darkness or the age of , it
is very very common. And so this is a phenomena that we shouldn t be too surprised about.
And this happened by conquerors in many many parts of the world. So for example when the
British or the Europeans colonised Africa, one of the common stated storylines that they
promoted was that before they turned up there was essentially no culture, civilisation or
anything in anywhere in Africa. Now there were some inconvenient evidence that kept
popping up. One of this evidence against their storyline was a the ruins of an ancient city
called Great Zimbabwe after which the country was later named. Now this is a fairly extensive
area with a stone city that, you know, the remains of which were found, you know from
the they were known about from at least the 16th century but certainly by the 18th century
people were well aware of this. And because it was very inconvenient to the story that
everything pre-colonial was the age of darkness, the story was built up that this city was
built by somebody from outside, perhaps from the Eastern Mediterranean, essentially white
skinned people who came and built these cities and provided civilisation to the locals. And
this storyline was the [hand gestures] official storyline all the way to when the Apartheid
regime in Rhodesia which later became Zimbabwe became free. Now people will immediately notice
the parallels between this storyline and the Aryan Invasion Theory . Essentially the British
and the Europeans when they came to India and they took over this place, they couldn
t make the case that there was no civilisation here, which was what they did in Africa. So
they made up this other story that while we may be new, there were another bunch of white
skinned chaps who came and gave you civilisation 1500 years-in 1500 B.C. and guess what, so
you shouldn t really mind the fact that we ve taken over your country because really
speaking we are latter the Aryans and we are here to give you a software update. So this
the odd this about this is that it was done fairly blatantly. There is no evidence of
any invasion in any texts. The earliest Vedic texts are very they have no knowledge of Central
Asia, they re basically concerned with southern Haryana. There is no archaeological evidence
of this, there is no genetic evidence of any invasion and yet what is quite amazing is
that we have continued to perpetuate this storyline in our own history. Now before I
go any further, one thing I do want to clarify is that I am not making the case here that
everything good in Indian civilisation is somehow indigenous. It s not. We have been
enormously enriched by all kinds of things either brought from outside by traders and
migrants who came peacefully and even by even by invaders who came in. I mean the Portuguese
may have done all kinds of bad things with under the inquisition but frankly Indian food
would be entirely unrecognisable without tomato, chillies and other things that the Portuguese
brought. And the British may have done all kinds of bad things like the Bengal Famine
of 1943 or-and various other famines and invasions and massacres but the fact is that I m giving
the talk to you in English, many of you will go back home and watch cricket and so on.
So the point is, it is also true that while these invasions happened, we have our civilisation
is a result of many of the influences that came from outside. So I m not making a case
here, let me clear, to make a case that somehow you know there s some pure indigenous culture
that we must try and revive. That is not at all my intention. It is also not my intention
that Indian history needs to be told from a purely the perspective of a Hindu India
or even the dharmic India because the fact is that we have many interactions and large
part of our civilisation has been enriched by people who belong to faiths and ideas and
cultures that have come from outside. But what I am making a case is that when we do
talk about this multitudinous and very plural culture, we talk about it still from the perspective
of the Indians, not the perspective of the invaders. And let me explain how this would
be. Let s take Islam for example. Not many people realise that the second oldest mosque
in the world is in India. It s the Cheruman mosque in Kerala, about an hour and a half
drive north of Kochi. This mosque was built by Arab traders who had been trading with
India from you know 5-600 years earlier se they were already very conversive with coming
to India and the very earliest Muslims, many of whom would have personally known the Prophet,
came and built this mosque. This mosque was built while Muhammad was still in Medina,
he had not yet conquered Mecca. Just think about it. This is how old that mosque is.
Within that same area, a short walk are some very very old Jewish synagogues, and in fact
Cochin even today has a shrinking but still existing Jewish community which is the oldest
continuous Jewish community in the world. Again, in the generally the same area, there
are Syrian Christians who, depending on whether you believe St. Thomas came to India or not
it is quite certain whether that this community is very very old, which came here in at least
by the 2nd century B.C. So even if St. Thomas the story is not true, they were certainly
there from a very very early stage, many of their liturgy is written in Syriac which is
very close to the language in which Jesus Christ Himself would have given preached Himself.
So these are some of the oldest texts of Christianity and now with the destruction of the Christian
community in Iraq and Syria, I think one can make the fair case that they are now also
the oldest continuous Christian community in the world. Now this is just one state,
of Kerala, and even in fact within that this is just a few districts where this is true
so the point I m making is they are also a part of our civilisation but yet our history
books don t talk about them. They are much more interested in Alauddin Khilji and Babur
and Ghazni because, as I pointed out to you this is not about our history, it is about
the history imposed on us from above. Now having coursed this rather colonial imposition
of history on us, the odd thing is that having become now free for some 70 odd years, we
never went about cleansing it of these biases. Now every other country faced these same problems
now if you go and read history books in any other part of the world, they tell their story
from their perspective. And the reason for that is a very simple one, as long as the
lions do not have their storytellers, history will always glorify the hunter . This is an
African saying. And so every culture tells a story from their perspective, fair enough
and the only people who have systematically not gone about doing this is essentially Indians.
This is not due to a lack of our own interest in history, but as I will point out to you,
it is because those who came to power in 1947 had a somewhat different agenda on what they
were trying to do. And to make my case, I m first going to take up 1 example of a king
called Ashoka, who all of you have read about, I m taking a very simple case, relatively
I could say unlike Tipu Sultan or any of the others which are controversial, I m going
to take a case where pretty much every book, every historian, every tv series is very clear
that he was a good guy. And I m going to show you that in fact almost everything that we
know about him is actually a lie. Now let s start with what do we know about Ashoka.
We know for sure that he was not the designated heir of that of the Mauryan Empire. His father
Bindusara wanted somebody else to become his heir. It happened to be that when Bindusara
was ill and he died, the crown prince was away in Gandhar fighting some invaders possibly
Greeks who were coming in and he was not in the capital. So Ashoka basically happened
to be in the capital and he took control of the capital Pataliputra and using Greek mercenaries
he murdered the crown prince when he came through to the gates of Pataliputra and possibly
burnt him alive. Subsequent of this, Ashoka then actually massacred pretty much all the
other male members of his family. The Buddhist texts say that 99 brothers were killed. He
also then carried out major massacres of pretty much all the other ministers, generals, etc
who may may have opposed him. Now having carried out all these great massacres he left one
person [hand gesture] alive who was his full brother Tissa and every other male member
of the family was essentially killed. Now this bit is agreed upon by everybody. This
bit is not the controversial bit. Now it happened to be that the Mauryan kings the Maurya family
was quite interesting in its religious beliefs so the court many of the court rituals that
were done were possibly very likely continued to be of Vedic court rituals but in their
personal life, many of them had very eclectic tastes so Chandragupta who was the grandfather
of Ashoka possibly became a Jain monk in his later years. Bindusara was a proponent of
a sect called the Ajivikas. The Ajivikas are no longer around, its very likely they merged
at some point with the Natha stream of Shaivism but it was one of the big rivals of Jainism
and Buddhism in the 3rd century B.C. and of course there were the Buddhists. Now we know
that there was lot of contention inside the court and it is very likely that Ashoka basically
sided with the Buddhists for political reasons because the rest of his family were either
Jains or Ajivikas. So there was a political reason why he took on Buddhism. And interestingly,
he became a Buddhist before [hand gestures] and I want to emphasize this before he invaded
Kalinga. Now the conventional story is that at some point, a few several years after he
has become the Emperor, Ashoka invaded Kalinga, he massacred a lot of people and then he felt
very sorry about it and he converted to Buddhism and became a passivist, that s the storyline.
But we know for sure, in fact from inscriptions that he was already a Buddhist when he invaded
Kalinga. Moreover, having carried out these big massacres, we are told he feels very sorry
about this because he told us how do you know this? Because he said so in his inscriptions.
Now it turns out, and I personally have looked into this by heading to Orissa and looking
up his inscriptions in Orissa they are very interesting. None of his inscriptions in Orissa
apologize make any apology for his invasion. Now surely, if you were interested in apologizing
to anybody, if you were feeling so sad about his treatment of the Kalingans, the one bunch
of people to whom you should be apologizing should be the Odhiya. But is Orissa there
is none, in fact the place where his apology his so-called apology is written is far away
[hand gestures]. Those inscriptions are now in Pakistan. Even worse, if you read through
those inscriptions properly instead of just the little bits that are put inside the textbooks,
it gives you a very different picture. In the very same inscription where Ashoka apologizes
oh you know I feel regret for having killed so many Kalingans in the very same [hand gestures]
inscription, the very next paragraph makes the following statement. However, you forest
tribes do not think just because I am feeling some regret having killing-killed all these
Kalingans, do not think I will not treat you in exactly the same way if you do not behave
yourself. Now if you read the whole thing the impression you get is a completely different
one. Basically what he is saying is, look I went and killed a whole bunch of those guys,
feeling a little sorry about it, but if you guys don t behave, you re going to get the
same treatment. Do not take my word for this, read that inscription yourself, its on its
available in various places online. I m amazed that more people don t make a fuss about it.
But this doesn t end here. Not only does his regret suspect, Ashoka then carried out a
number of other massacres. He there is at least two massacres that are clearly mentioned
in a book called Ashokavadana which is a Sri Lankan Buddhist text which is widely used
by the historians to write the history of Ashoka. There is one case in which he killed
18000 Ajivikas in Bengal and there is another case which is quite scary in modern context
is that there was a Jain who created a [hand gestures] drawing of Buddha where he basically
showed either a Buddha or a Buddhist bowing to a Jain tirthankara. So his family was essentially
locked up inside the house, including his whole family, kids and everybody and set on
fire. And the Ashoka said that he would provide a gold coin for every Jain person s head that
could be brought to him. And this carried on till eventually the fanaticism went to
such an extent that somebody mistook his last remaining brother Tissa who was and chopped
off his head [hand gestures] and brought him his head. And that is when the madness stopped.
Now whenever I point this out to mainstream historians, they say oh you know this is not
really true because this was you know perhaps inserted into the story couple of hundred
years later by fanatical Sri Lankan Buddhists. So I said that s entirely possible but should
you be thinking about this should you not be also taking this same scepticism and applying
it to the rest of the text that extols Ashoka for being such a great king? And in fact,
the storyline that I have just laid out in front of you is based on exactly the same
inscriptions and exactly the same texts that are used by mainstream historians, all of
which incidentally are available online. [hand gestures] Do not take my word for it. You
can search this up all online. Now of course given the length of time and that has passed
it is entirely possible that my story is also just as weak as the one that is being taught
in the mainstream and I accept it. But the fact of the matter is, firstly, this whole
story is based on very little evidence. Two, the evidence as it exists seems to support
my story and not that of the mainstream so at the very least why do not the mainstream
historians mention that there is an alternative way of thinking about it. In fact, many books
have recently been published and there is even a serial now going on about Ashoka which
simply whitewash and do not even mention these great massacres of Ajivikas and Jains that
that Ashoka carried out. But there is even greater evidence of why Ashoka was not such
a great chap. And that evidence is there in full display to anybody who bothers to visit
Bhubaneshwar. Just outside Bhubaneshwar there is a cave and a hill and a cave called Hathigumpha
where there is a [hand gestures] inscription by a person called king called Kharavela.
Kharavela was an Odhiya king who was couple of generations after Ashoka. By this time
the empire of Ashoka has collapsed. Now this is one important point here. Firstly, that
Ashoka usurped an empire that existed and was functioning perfectly well. His empire
collapsed while he was still alive. If he was such a great king, why did his kingdom
collapse while he was still alive? And 2 generations later, Kalinga was actually free. And more
interestingly is what Kharavela then says in his inscription. Kharavela says that I
went to Pataliputra and I brought back the Jain idols that were taken away from us. I
have then made the king of Pataliputra bend to me. What is he saying? He is saying I have
destroyed the Mauryan Empire. He doesn t have to say that these were the chaps who came
in and invaded us and then he places these inscriptions in a very interesting place.
He places them in Hathigumpha and now if you go on a clear day and it has to have the smog
off Bhubaneshwar and if you look across from Hathigumpha across Bhubaneshwar on the other
side there is another hill, its called Dhauli hill. What does Dhauli hill have? It has Ashoka
s inscription. So what is Kharavela saying? That [hand gestures] You, Ashoka, you came
here, you carried out this massacre. We remember. I went to Pataliputra and destroyed your empire.
I brought back the Jain idols. And very very interesting how he does this. So point is,
the whole legend of Ashoka both in terms of the texts that exist as well as the behaviour
of subsequent rulers towards the Mauryans clearly show that this whole Ashokan project
was an essentially a failure. If anything, it was the first large scale act of religious
genocide ever carried out in Indian history. And thankfully this would not be too common
for a long time in medieval times we would have this but at least in ancient times it
would be an exception to Indian history. Now I then began to dig into why on earth did
we end up with this great story about Ashoka? It turns out that in the Indian tradition
Ashoka is not considered a great king. In fact, he was almost everything but forgotten
in the Indian tradition, which is surely the best punishment possible to a king who wanted
to perpetuate his myth. And he was rediscovered by the British in the 19th century by virtue
of having figured out the Brahmi inscriptions that were left behind by Ashoka because many
people couldn t read it so then they began to read those inscriptions. They finally discovered
that there was this king somewhere out there and Princep and others began to talk about
this king and then finally after some effort they figure out that there was this king called
Ashoka who had put together these inscriptions. Now in this context it is quite interesting
that it was the British who began to dig out the fact that even Ashoka existed. But his
elevation to being The Great is of even more recent origin. It goes back to no more than
the 1920s and 1930s. And it turns out the reason that he was very useful entirely related
to the rise of Nehruvian socialism. You see, when you were in the 1920s and especially
the 1930s, it became pretty clear that in not too much time, India would become a free
country. Now at that time consequently the younger generation of leaders who are coming
up wanted essentially to create a lineage for their ideological viewpoint. Now there
was a real problem if you happened to be Nehru or one of the socialists because essentially
the obvious place to look for a lineage for your thoughts was to look at the Arthashastra.
Now the Arthashastra is entirely inconvenient to anybody trying to promote socialism because
essentially, and by the way those of you who think he was Machiavelli of India also haven
t read the Arthashastra. Arthashastra has nothing to do with Machiavelli at all. It
is a text very well written with about how to run an empire once you have created it.
And it was created by a guy who actually created one of the world s greatest empires so you
know unlike Machiavelli who was a small-time political advisor, Chanakya was a guy who
set up a serious empire. He is also not about spies and other things, yes there are some
sections about internal security where spies and foreign policies and all that is there
but it also talks about municipal laws, it talks about taxation, it talks about all kinds
of other issues that are related to how to run a kingdom. But the principles on which
it is based is essentially what I would call a strong but limited state. What do I mean
by strong but limited state? So the Chanakyan state was essentially a state which concerned
itself with the following activities: [hand gestures] defence, internal security, infrastructure
and municipal order, coinage, taxation and some very broad big picture things. It was
quite clearly not a welfarest state. In fact there are many many instances where Chanakya
clearly goes out there and says that the state should not interfere in the lives of people
and one of them is very clear in the discussion on prohibition where basically Chanakya makes
the case that this is ridiculous that others are talking about you know interfering in
people s lives and enforcing prohibitions. As long as people are not you know are enjoying
themselves and not interfering with public order we should never have prohibition he
actually says this. So it was very clearly about having a strong state so in those areas
where the state is paramount Chanakya had no sense of humour but he was also very clear
that beyond those limited areas where the state was paramount, the state should not
expand itself so it was clearly not about interfering in people s lives, it was clearly
not a welfarest state. Yes you know the areas of intervention yes that there is a natural
calamity the state should intervene that but that is not that is not welfarism in any meaningful
sense, its emergency rescue work. Now when Nehru and the socialists found this as an
inconvenient fact, they began to look through Indian history and look for somebody who fitted
their worldview and that is when they came across Ashoka s nice inscriptions. And in
those inscriptions Ashoka continuously talks about how to interfere with people s lives.
In fact he creates an entire guarder of people called Dharmamahamantas what we today would
call the religious police. And he instructs people that you shall not have a peacock on
Monday, have a pigeon on Thursday, you will not till this and in fact he literally goes
all the way to say that my-all these officials that we have created they are like I have
created them in the same way that a parent gives his children to a nanny, in the same
I have given you these , he s literally talks about a nanny state. So it is of course if
you happen to be a fabian socialist think it s a wonderful idea, so you dig out this
character, dust him off from history, quietly hide all the massacres he did and then you
present him [hand gestures] Ashoka the Great and essentially, this is the history of Ashoka.
It s a completely fabricated story pulled out of, basically from oblivion, by the British
who had other reasons to doing it but having brought him out it was really the Nehruvian
socialists who then pushed him up becoming this great king because it essentially suited
their story and then they of course whitewashed everything around him. Now I ve spoken for
quite some time right now but the point I ve been trying to make so far is that a very
large part of our history that we read is actually bunkum. Actually, almost even a interested
enthusiast like me [hand gestures] spends a little bit of time digging the digging up
stuff will very quickly find that it is mostly nonsense. Now this of course means that our
history needs to be written, whether professional historians do it or amateurs do it I don t
know but it is the case that we now need to get on with the job of digging up our own
history, telling it from our own perspective because if we do not do this the tragedy will
be that it will be done for us by others, for their own agenda. So now the good news
is that travel is much easier, much of the material is now available either online or
you can simply buy it off Amazon. So it is no longer so easy to simply fool everybody
all the time and so one of the things I am doing as my own agenda is to begin to actually
dig up some of the things and begin to present it to people like you [hand gestures] and
to show you that how ridiculous some of these assertions of our history books are. And in
fact I have this point about Ashoka I actually wrote about 2 months ago in an article which
I published and it went viral on the net, many of you may have actually read it. And
its quite amusing that the magazine that published it then went and contacted some of the leading
[hand gestures] authorities on Mauryan India and asked them to write a rebut and on every
single case the response they got is that you know what he s saying is a tricky issue.
Now when mainstream historians say that they cannot respond to complete undermining of
everything they have written by saying that it s a tricky issue, it suggests to me that
maybe I am onto something. [Laughter]. So with that I am going to stop and I m happy
to answer Q and A, thanks. Yes? [hand gesture]. Audience 1: Good evening sir you ve told about
how history has been written and rewritten in our like how our invaders imposed their
history on us so im currently in India what happens is there are competing ideologies
so whatever government comes in power, whoever whosoever has the chance to they try to write
it in their perspective. There are 29 states, every state can have their own type of history
books so some people are reading you know one perspective and the other people are reading
other perspective so it is you know it s not uniting India moreover its dividing India
on the basis of how they perceive ideas. So don t you like how do you take it like how
can we create a mainstream research about the situation?
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah so one thing let it be very clear that all history is written
from some perspective. Now all I m arguing is that two things, one is that there is no
particular reason why they we should spend in you know after 70 years after independence
we should be reading history from a colonial perspective or the perspective of a certain
dynasty. We should have an Indian perspective. It will still be a perspective but it will
at least be a perspective at least more broadly [hand gestures] in sync with which is our
story. Of course, that story will be from a you know you re saying that it should be
entirely free of bias, maybe not, but it will be our bias. Why is it why is that a bad thing?
It s not, number one. Number two, however, even if we do tell our own story from our
perspective which is very important that at least we make sure that we stick to the evidence.
Now one of the biggest problems of Indian history writing is that most people don t
even bother with the evidence. And it s quite astonishing that in fact it comes across even
more clearly in my new book that I m writing on the Indian Ocean, I have actually discovered
that most of the Indian historians essentially hangout in various talking shops in Delhi
and have not visited most of the major sites that they are writing about. It is absolutely
astonishing. I ve talked about you know many of the places like Muziris which is a major
port in Kerala. I was amazed that I was one of the very very few people who actually goes
and visits many of these sites. Similarly when I talked about Kharavela and other things,
there is actually the place where the Ashoka attacked the capital of Kalinga, it was called
Toshali and completely destroyed it. That the excavations of found Toshali and I went
to the place to do, a few years ago to look up that site and the archaeologist told me
that I m the first person who can be termed Historian to have visited that place. Just
think about it, this is one of the most important events in Indian history and nobody has bothered
to look into it. But there are many such instances I as an amateur I have gone around to many
many places and I have been stunned that when you read the textbook it makes no sense but
when you go and read the original source [hand gestures] you know whoever it is and you read
it and you just visit the place, your completely different story comes up. And the reason this
is happening is that nobody is bothering to look at the evidence and it is not just and
the reason people are getting away with it is because even those who are questioning
these mainstream historians are also themselves not bothering to do it. So we have this entire
debate which is going on in a vacuum [hand gestures] without any evidence. So very important
before we get into anything else that we look at the hard evidence we present it clearly,
it is okay to have a perspective, it s okay to have your own interpretation but the facts
must be placed as they are and that is I think very important. But as I mentioned you know
sure any perspective will have a certain bias, so what? But it will be our bias. [Hand gestures].
Audience 2: Sir I have a few questions actually Yes . First I want to ask you is to define
what textbooks you are talking about because I am a history student, I study at Delhi University
and more or less the information that you gave out on Ashoka, it is available. There
is a book by Upinder Singh, I hope you get it Yes and that s the standard textbook, yeah.
that s the standard textbook that s the most like it s the book that gives out on the surface
and it has a lot of information that you Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yes so now let me tell
you first of all most of the history people read you are a history M.A. student or maybe
right? Most of the people who will read history is their is going to basically get it from
their school textbooks. The school textbooks, which are 99% of what they learnt about say
Ashoka does not contain all of this number one. Right? Why not? And why give completely
the false view? Number one. Number two, even when you are talking about you have a book
written very recently by Nayanjot Lahiri on Ashoka, she does not at all bring any of this
out incidentally. She does not get into Ashokavadana at all. I have read this book, I have it with
me, I haven t brought it here but she does not bring it out. Why? I would be at least
have some respect if she talked about it and say Okay I have this view on the matter which
is fine but to have used the Ashokavadana and then to have left out the critical bits
where Ashoka is clearly shown to be a tyrant is just astonishing. And my point is look
I m not saying that maybe many of the things I mentioned are later insertions but so it
s in the same text, why not take your same scepticism to the whole text?
Audience 2: Second was Yes? what is the Indian perspective that you think that should be
added and It is whatever we write, we are Indians we should write it no? [laughter]
No, because as a history student we get to read about a lot of schools Yeah, that s fine
history. We get to read the Marxist school, we get to read the orientalist school, we
get to read a lot of schools because even if you re talking about a British school,
Yes there were maternalists Yes , there were orientalists Yes and there were people like
and there were people like Monroe and they all wrote about it and you can t really say
that there is one body of which is the British school No no of course I m simplifying for
purposes I m aware of that. And just like that, just like as it was in the British you
can t really say because we get to read a lot of history books right now Yes and on
the same issue we have different opinions and that will always be with No no that s
fine that s fair enough. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: So my objection largely
is to two folds. One is that the evidence is very often simply ignored or hidden which
is actually a lie. So I have no problem with interpretation but first point is a lot of
the evidences deliberately and I gave you the example of Ashoka, that s just one example,
I can give lots more. Till recently till people dug up stuff on Tipu Sultan and he being turned
up as a national hero. So clearly there is one problem with evidence which is simply
systematically presented to [audience 2 speaks] archaeology, text whatever it is, yeah so
it can be text also whatever it is, whatever the evidence is, can be genetics also. Whatever
the evidence is the hard evidence has to be presented if you re an honest historian you
should present the then you can interpret what you want. So the first problem is simply
that there is a great amount of dishonesty in not presenting the evidence. The second
point of the matter is yes, there are different schools of thought even within the Marxists
and so on but you see what has happened, and systematically happened and you will appreciate
this that a few schools of thought have definitely heavily dominated the discussion you cannot
deny that, number one. Number two, there are many [hand gestures] layers of things that
are embedded into our history which we simply accept without really getting into the discussions
about much of it is [audience 2 speaks] yeah, we do not and I just gave you the example,
our interactions with Islam is always presented as great invasions. Why not about trade? Why
is there not greater discussion on Indian influence on Southeast Asia but in fact also
huge amount of Southeast influence on India. There is a lot of evidence of this and I live
in Southeast Asia, there is evidence everywhere [hand gestures] but no history books talks
about it. Audience 2: What level of history books are
we talking about? Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: The first point I made
was about school level textbooks which I said essentially do not even get into this, right?
They basically give a Audience 2: textbooks similarly don t get
into Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No maybe they don t, maybe
they don t, but they don t you know start up by saying you know we will now talk about
the sun going around the earth [hand gestures] and then we will move on to the earth going
around the sun [hand gestures]. Right? So they don t have actual lies embedded there.
They may not tell you the full extent of the facts but they do not have embedded lies there.
The point I m making about the Indian textbooks are that the school textbooks have embedded
lies in them. Yes? [hand gestures]. Audience 3: that is the reason they have and
I have actually heard this last year, so this might create some kind of contrast [hand gestures]
here Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No why not just present
the facts? What is the problem with presenting the facts? These are the facts. Otherwise
let s say no this is not history; this is basically some so the point I m making is
interpretation is one thing at least let s start with being honest about the facts. [audience
3 speaks] No of course there was an invasion it s basically clearly obvious. Now you never
going to have you see in every country, before you have peace you have some even for example
you take other multicultural societies. Let s take South Africa, which happened very recently.
Went through apartheid then became non apartheid. They had something called the truth and reconciliation
committee and they went through a whole process of truth telling. Everybody after the end
of it said this is what happened, let s be frank, this is what happened. So unless you
are at least honest about your own past then why are we even bothering with it? Then let
us not complain that Indians are not interested in the history because at the end of it we
know even if we do not know it I cannot articulate it, the average person knows that this is
a lie and consequently they don t care about it.
Audience 3: history on all of the people. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: What do you mean my point
is, let us have an honest discussion on what the facts are. Then different people you can
have Hindutva history as well; you can have a Marxist history. How is a Hindutva history
first of all any worse than a Marxist history or any other? Everybody has right to opinion.
They do not have a right to their facts. So at the very least the facts need to be told
clearly. After that, different people can have their opinions and I think let different
thousand different opinions flourish it s okay.
Audience 2: Personally from what I ve seen, usually, it s not a question on the facts
that creates these differences. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Well actually it is. Some
of it is pure lies. I just gave you the example of [laughter]
Audience 2: Okay Babur came to India in 1526, he conquered India and he became whatever
he became and the Mughal became whatever they became. Why did he do that, has been presented
in various manner Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No but he s this is the
point I m making, why did he it. Let s take why he did it. In the Baburnama, he clearly
tells us why he did it. He says that I invaded India because it is a horrible place but it
has plenty of gold. Why there should be a debate about this matter?
Audience 2: Why shoudn t there be? Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Why? Because he is telling,
the man himself is telling us why he did it. Audience 2: Abu l Faisal writes this on behalf
of Akbar. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: This is not on behalf.
Babur is writing this on behalf of himself [laughter].
Audience 2: Abu l Faisal writes it only after Akbar signs it off, but Akbar only tells us
about all the nice things he has done for the world.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Of course he does. Audience 2: but now he tells us about what
he didn t do good right. Okay. Then we take both of them together and we make our own
analysis. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: So fine some places there
are separate facts, some places there are separate facts.
Audience 2: So Babur can tell about himself. Okay I came because of this and we believe
him only because he is saying that Mr. Rahul Dewan: Okay so I have a counter
argument, just yesterday there is a radio show. There is a radio show which talks about
I was just going around cycling with my son the show says it s about Babur and Humayun
and it was an engagement of Humayun on Ibrahim Lodi, if I am correct?
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah, Babur on Ibrahim Lodi.
Mr. Rahul Dewan: So when Babur says Hum inn videshiyon ko khader denge Delhi se and I
was like okay, then what is Babur? [laughter] [audience 2 speaks] that was-that is a radio
show. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: That is what I m telling
you that what is now percolated through to popular culture, partly because that yeah
partly because of the fact that you think that this is a matter of debate. It is not
a matter of debate why Babur invaded India. It is totally not. Because there is no other
evidence of any other reason he came to India. If there was another bunch of facts and this
was this bunch of facts we can have a debate. But on Babur, as I pointed out to you why
should there be a debate? There is only one bunch of facts told to us from the best possible
source which is the man himself who wrote that book himself and he tells us why he did
it. Why is this if this is not a fact, then nothing else is a fact. Yes?
Audience 4: You talked about Ashoka. So you are talking about Ashoka all the inscriptions
he wrote, those inscriptions were written by him or dictated by him right? And there
also, as you pointed out there are people who wanted to communicate what Ashoka did
only picked up the those parts of the inscriptions which were meaningful to them
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yes. They edited out large parts of it.
Audience 4: So in the same way, why has nobody talked about Babur s Baburnama?
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah of course, it s his point of view.
Audience 4: Yeah because it did not make sense to talk about them, as per their own agenda.
Yeah. So as per my agenda I want to highlight what good things Ashoka did, so I pick up
those parts of Ashoka s inscriptions. Yes But as per my agenda
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: So this is the exactly, so this is the point I am making. It is okay
to have any opinion but you have no right to your own facts. Correct. You have right
to your own opinion, only. But you cannot change the facts. So the first point most
important point I want to make is that at least let us be honest about the facts, as
best we know it. Secondly, yes you can have interpretations, let us be clear that everything
in the textbook is an interpretation and there are different interpretations, let us let
all those interpretations be put in then. So when for example there are discussions
these days about revision of textbooks. And people will say that you know it will be used
as an excuse to introduce right wing lies into the text. Now my view would be that there
s no excuse for leaving left wing and colonial lies in the text, right? So my view is, the
only way you can deal with this problem is the following way: first of all clearly state
what are your sources and what are the facts, okay? Once you have stated what the clear
facts are then you say that these above facts are can be interpretated to tell this story,
this story, this story [hand gestures]. At least give some now this will have 2 interesting
impacts. One is it will be more honest, first of all. Secondly our history books will become
vastly more interesting because rather than it becoming about a series of random dates,
it will be about the exploring of our past. So I think that is a point I ve made in a
sometime ago in a mint article where I basically said you know let s put the facts down as
best we know them and let s let there be different opinions. Let there be also right wing view,
thik hai. And you tell people that yeh iska opinion hai, yeh iska opinion hai.
Audience 4: So what is actually happening is because the facts are not being brought
out so today if I say that Babur said this in Baburnama it is not projected as a fact.
Yes if I say this it is projected as a right wing lie.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yes so that is the that is my that is where my objection lies. Exactly
Yes sorry [hand gesture] Abhinav. Hey just stand up and
Audience 5: Yes. specially when we come down to history Yes. This history has never been
Yes. a myth making or something Yes. Up until now we see in the last 10 years lots of people
are studying history from the left but they are saying this is an attempt at sensitisation.
The example of Raja Suheldev is being dismissed as an attempt at sensitisation, but at the
same time they say they go and write a book warrior saint. Shahid Amin wrote a book about
so how do you think that we history in India? Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: So I think oral histories
are really important because as I said we were ruled much of the mainstream history
is the history of foreign invaders written by foreign invaders so to the extent that
our own history exists at all is actually in the oral histories. And in fact this Raja
Suheldev s story actually I know most about it from you. And how did you know about it?
Because this is the oral history of the Pasis right? So, I think there s a great case for
writing it. I am just sad that not enough people are taking this seriously enough and
to the extent that I know this history that I
Audience 5: very serious Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yes. [audience 5 speaks]
Yeah so the point of the matter is there s no point arguing against it you have to provide
the alternative what you think is the alright first of all put down what the facts of the
story as best known are and then try and provide your own interpretation of it. They can interpret
in their way another interpretation that s fine. Million interpretations exist.
Audience 6: Is the Indian history too hung up on Delhi and ?
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yes they are because you see because the control of Delhi is very its
again go it is again a lot to do with the history of who [hand gesture] controls. So
basically it was the history of those who controlled Delhi sultanate and that is the
prospect prospect of it was hidden so now when the British came in, they did not want
to encourage the new history from the perspective of the locals because that all they would
much rather see themselves as oh, you know the Indians always keep losing, all these
war, they are basically a slave people and we are just replacing the previous bad lot
of rulers with us who are good lot of rulers but guess what, you guys cannot be rulers.
And so, then you have a British history which maybe initially moves to Calcutta but it s
still from it s a central history. It s the history of a centralised and consequently
we therefore, systematically delete out of it these histories of the extremes in particularly
the histories of things that could be construed as resistance [hand gesture]. So that is why
Lachit Borphukan or the Vijayanagar empire or Travancore or for that matter the history
of Mewar are systematically not presented into this storyline. Hence the Maratha empire
is a very inconvenient to the whole narrative. Audience 7: I would like to add Chola empire.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Cholas, yes. Audience 7: That Chola empire was so vast
that people did go to Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: And by the way incidentally
Cholas were very late in the game. They were [audience 7 speaks] yes and in fact my next
book which is The History of the Indian Ocean is a lot about the Odhiyas who in fact went
and took it was before the Tamils it was the Odhiya who were the great merchants of the
Eastern Indian Ocean. They went all over they pioneered roots all over all the way to Vietnam
and they colonised Sri Lanka in fact the majority population today of Sri Lanka is of Odhiya-Bengali
the Sinhalese are of Odhiya-Bengali origin. Because of these huge merchant ships that
were coming from what is now the area between what is now Hooghli river that is now in Bengal
going all the way to Chilika lake. That entire zone was full of ports and they were coming
down and settling in Sri Lanka and of course the oral history since we were talking about
it earlier it s amazing how interesting it gels once you begin to break out of these
[hand gestures] outside worldview and begin to look into our own traditions. So why do
they for example the Sri Lankans call themselves the Sinhala ? They are lion people. Why do
they call themselves because in their origin myth, a king called Vijaya, a prince called
Vijaya came and Vijaya came from a kingdom called Sinhapura and his grandfather was a
lion who had married a human princess. Now it s quite interesting that the area from
which generally they had come is also to this day a major area for Narasimha worship. Even
today if you go to Papuri, when the Puri major festival happens Jagannath festival happen
the prasad is even today first given to a temple dedicated to Narsimha. Because that
is the old core God of that area. And equally you have of course Durga s lion which also
comes from that same area. So the veneration of the lion as a major symbol of that part
of India which is particularly interesting because its tiger country and not lion country
is a very strong tradition which these people then took to Sri Lanka and have kept it there
and its quite interesting the battle between the Sinhalese and the Tamils and then these
old totems come out. On one side there is the lion and on the other side of course you
have the LTT tigers. Yes sorry there s a gentleman right at the back. Who has been yeah.
Audience 8: My name is Abhimanyu Gupta and I m working with William Dalrymple and I was
like really amazed to listen whatever you said. You know the biggest thing that you
said about the propaganda, basically. So the best example that we have is the most terrible
movie I have ever seen is 300 where they are actually showing that how the Greeks are actually
superior to the Persians Yeah. because it is actually setting in that U.S. propaganda
that why Iranians are bad even now. They were bad Yes. 2000 years ago as well and basically
the Wyatts are actually liberating the world from the tryant
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No but there is there is plenty of this and I ll give you we all
watched Tarzan and Phantom comics. What is the story really about? So white guy essentially
is required to look after all these natives. So basically what is the subliminal message?
That you know don t mind us if we are just running the show in your country because you
know otherwise you guys can t really run the show so this is subliminally done in many
many ways [laughter]. Audience 8: So I was researching Yeah and
like ever since we are born we are like the first, the most important history that we
read is the Egyptian history, and we always see the pharaohs as whites. But now it has
come out that the pharaohs were always black and their slaves were whites.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Potentially, I don t know. I don t know about this particular but it
s possible. Audience 8: Yeah so like you said about the
like about the oral history, even Homer s Odysseys, it was written 500 years after the
Trojan War was over. And basically the Homer who has written the Trojan history is not
actually the Homer who was there who witnessed the Trojan War.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Entirely possible. I don t know enough about this. But I can tell you
that there is a lot of this even in the Indian history just to give you an example since
I was talking about the Aryan Invasion Theory . The history was that they came on horses
with [hand gestures] iron weapons and they you know went through. It turns out iron is
an Indian invention. And the earliest place in the world where iron is systematically
used is not even in Northern India, its actually in and around the Godavari belt, the oldest
recently they found 2200 B.C. iron inside Hyderabad University campus. They have discovered
iron weapons and all kinds of iron things 2000 to 2200 B.C. These are the oldest systematic
use of iron anywhere in the world. So far from being a technological advantage of chaps
coming in from the Central Asia, this was the technological advantage the locals had
over the foreigners. Not only that, 600 years after this in about 1370 B.C. we actually
have a bunch of Vedic God worshipping people who conquer Northern Iraq, a group called
the Mitanni. And the Mitanni not only worshipped Vedic Gods, they also incidentally introduce
an Indian technology: iron. Now to say that these chaps came from Central Asia is ridiculous.
There is no sign of use of central Asia of either Vedic Gods or of iron. In fact it s
not even clear that they were the first people to domesticate the horse. Because the actually
some of the earliest signs of horse are actually also in Indian Neolithic sites, in and around
Allahabad. So you know the fact of the matter is that this whole storyline is basically
rubbish. Yeah, [hand gestures] yeah? Audience 9: I just want to point I ll make
some small comment. Yeah. Actually I believe...what my belief has been there has been a lot of
debates going on history. Yeah Romila Thapar has been writing one book and another book
on Yeah. Ashoka and the Mauryas, Nayanjot Lahiri came out with that recent book on Ashoka.
So there are a lot of debates and what I believe is that they people don t actually care their
books are there out, they hold debate but the people of academics have had a monopoly
over this debate. People are not actually bothered by this debate mostly. They don t
have to go and read these books ,aybe long time.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No so I no no you are right that ultimately specialists have a huge
advantage in any field not just in history. This will be true of physics, true of and
in fact I forget who a very famous scientist made the comment that All progress in science
happens one funeral at a time. So just imagine if this is true of science which is supposedly
as objective as it gets then in subjective fields like history writing or many other
fields as well this is obviously going to be the case. All I m trying to do here is
to point out that what is presented as fact to much of us is not the case. I know many
people have suspected this for a while but I m just taking a few instances and bringing
this up as an issue because I think it is very important for any civilisation particularly
one of which we are very proud of. And most people here would say, that you know we are
very very proud of our civilisation but let s be honest about it that not everything about
it is great. I chose particularly Ashoka because it would you know get away from daily debates
on religious identity and all that which are of today. Ashoka is relatively more distant
to it and that s why I specifically [hand gestures] chose Ashoka because then I can
relative to you know, relative to other characters in human history I can show you that even
in this case you can, you can see how much of it is fudged. Now I m not saying that this
is therefore you know we should not read history, I think its important to recognise its nature.
After all, forget about events that happened 2400 years ago, even events that happened
in last week are furiously debated in columns every day in the newspapers so its not that
surprising that we have different views on what happened so long ago. So I am not therefore
very squeamish about there being different interpretations. It s a nature of human beings.
The world would be a boring place if we all agreed on everything. So, that is not what
I am squeamish about. What I am squeamish about is two things. One is the blatant misuse
of evidence. I think the evidence has to be clear, continuously updated, its not static
evidence as well. We are continuously doing archaeology, finding new texts, doing genetics,
climate science which is which I can tell you will completely change the ways we think
about, the coastline of India that we see today is actually a relatively recent phenomena.
This coastline is alive, its continuously changing, the climate is continuously changing,
we are having one of the warmest winters in history. But let me assure you there have
been many episodes through history where this has happened. One of the great events of our
history has been the drying up of the Saraswati river which was a cataclysmic event. So climate
history, all these all these pieces of information are continuously being updated. We need to
be honest about what this information is and continuously update it. So that s one. One
evidence based. The second is that we must allow for a variety of interpretations to
flourish, as long as they are reasonably logical, it is fine. My objection mainly is to the
monopolisation of this narrative by a relatively small group of people for blatantly political
objectives that have continued to happen till this day. Now I made this big hoo-hah about
Nehru. There are people here who maybe be great admirers of Nehru that is perfectly
fine. But I have made my case of why I think he did it. And by the way it is not a completely
outrageous statement about Nehru because Nehru was a great history maker, he wrote history
himself but he also created his own aura in many ways I mean here is a man who awarded
himself the Bharat Ratna [laughter]. Here is a man who while he was Prime Minister instituted
his own birthday as children s day and then so this is not a person who is not [hand gestures]
unaware of the processes that I m talking about, he is very well aware of this. So therefore,
when we deal with and of course 23rd we may find out some more interesting things about
him so wait till that although I will be very surprised if the most juicy files still exist.
I will very very surprised. I think most of the Netaji files have already been sanitised
long ago. But anyway nevermind. Yeah I have a gentleman right at the back no you didn
t okay. The lady here has been [hand gestures] wants to say something.
Audience 10: In reference to the comparison made between Machiavelli and Chanakya. You
said that Chanakya speaks both about acquiring of power and consolidation of power whereas
Machiavelli doesn t do that. But I think his book The Prince, three-fourth of is definitely
about acquiring power but one-fourth of it also deals with consolidation of power.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: But its he is dealing with you see Machiavelli only deals with power.
If you read the Arthashastra its not there is obviously as a he s talking about the state
so as a maintenance of power most of it is about maintenance of power not about acquisition.
Maintenance of power is an important underlying theme in it. Yeah I-I But the thing about
the book is that it s a very different book. It talks about taxation, it talks about municipal
issue, it talks about foreign policy. In that context it also talks about power which is
very different from Machiavelli, he is not concerned about governance at all whereas
the Arthashastra is all about governance. Audience 10: Yeah that could have been for
a lot of reasons I feel and Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No there will be a difference
so all I m saying is that Machievelli and Chanakya being equated is ridiculous because
obviously any book written on state craft is about power but they are totally different
books written about totally different levels of people. One guy is a small-time advisor
to a small kingdom in Italy, here is you know the creator of one of the greatest empires
in human history not just in Indian history. And then the book is a much more sophisticated
book about governance and all kinds of other things. Machiavelli is basically about a court
in . Audience 10: I m from political science Yeah.
and I find it quite ridiculous when Chanakya is referred to as the Indian Machiavellli.
Yeah. It has always baffled me a lot like why should he be called an Indian Machiavelli.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah its like exactly so you know its like being [crowd suggestions]
no Kalidas and Shakespeare atleast there is this thing level but here it s a they are
not even at the same level its like you know its like calling Tendulkar after some Ranji
level player [laughter]. Audience 10: Now there is that in Jharkhand
there is a lot of excavations that are happening and a lot of things are being discovered.
Yes. Monoliths have been discovered in past year but nothing of no sort of discussion
is happening around that not even in the historical Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Well some of it to be
fair is very young so we don t know what it means but some of it is very interesting from
a different perspective which is one of the things that I have made earlier is the issue
about iron. It is very clear now that iron was an Indian innovation and the use of iron
spread not not only was it an Indian innovation it is a Central South Indian innovation basically
[hand gestures] Jharkhand, Godavari, that kind of zone. Yeah so which continuously fits
interestingly with our own history which is there in the epics. Now if you look at the
epics I m not looking at the historicity of the events themselves but the general description
of the world that I m talking about one the geography but also if you look at it, the
very powerful kingdoms in the epics are not in the North-West as the Aryan Invasion Theory
would let you suggest. Who are the great powerful empires of say The Mahabharata? It is Magadh,
Jarasandha s Magadh. He is powerful enough to drive even Krishna away to go to Gujarat.
Who is the powerful kingdom of is in southern the Rakshasas of Ravana. The Rakshasas are
from Central India they incidentally they are not from Sri Lanka. It was Kuber who went
to Sri Lanka and setup an empire and he shifted his capital there. They are basically central
Asian central Indians and they are Bhargavas in fact even to this day the bhargavas of
Madhya Paradesh consider Ravana to be one of their own. So they are brahmins from central
India, So this is it turns out to be a major area of activity and it turns out that they
had iron was clearly something that was heavily used in this part of the world and it fits
in with our own view of history. So even if the story line is make believe, it is you
know even people who are writing epics are usually placing it in the context of their
times so the places they are talking about are real. Even today modern fiction writers
write about real places and very often consequently through those writings you can tell what the
social context was. For example its quite clear that you know North-East India had a
matrilineal system even in ancient times those who have read about Ulupi or Chitangada and
so on so many of these things are social contexts can be disearned from the texts.
Audience 10: Sir they have a goddess named Panthobe and Panthobe they say that since
Hinduism came later to them the Meidai Community of Manipur they say that we still celebrate
Panthobe and Panthobe the way Panthobe dresses and the way she looked is quite similar to
Durga. Its very similar the colors, the hair, everything.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah its possible but you see there is a lot of things going back
and forth migrations again a point that I will make in my next book is that Indian history
is written as if there is some sort of a pipe line from Central Asia that goes to North
India then goes to South India and maybe a little bit goes to South-East Asia. That is
totally not how you see Indian history particularly when you begin to take a maritime view of
it okay. There were enormous migrations into India [hand gestures]and in and out from the
east. So many of the tribes of Eastern and Central-Eastern India are actually of South-East
Asian origin. I mean I am not just talking about the ones that now still look oriental
like the Khasis and so on but even the Santas the language the Munda languages are actually
all related to Khmer which is Cambodian. And not only that, we now have genetic proof that
they are also migrants so they were migrations happening through the east as well its not
just you know its and of course Southern Indians were going up and as I pointed out there were
periods in the iron age where the Southern Indians probably were the powerful kingdoms.
Rather than the Aryan invasion happening it was Southern Indians [hand gestures] going
up sometimes and coming down mixing all kinds of movements going on. Yes? Okay 2 more questions,
one here and one gentleman right at the end Audience 11: So Sanjeev firstly I want to
say that I really enjoyed reading your book Thank you. The Land of Seven Rivers. I also
buy into your argument that you know the history around the maritime history around the Indian
Ocean has not been as well explored as it should have been. Large part of our history
is more land based and but at the same time there are some things which come to mind.
The first thing being that I never really walked out of school reading history there
feeling not proud about my country. I did come back and say that you know this is a
great country, I did read about you know some of your ancestors, your great grand uncles
as well. So that was one part. What you re trying to say here and I m just trying to
understand what you re trying to say, is that popular history or there is something wrong
with popular history as it is understood by the common people. But are you also in some
ways questioning academic history here? Or history as its taught in colleges and you
know in graduate school etc? Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Sir so I m certainly questioning
our general impressions of history. I am questioning a lot of the textbook history that we generally
read in particularly in high school because most of us will not become history students
Sure. So I am questioning certainly questioning academic history of that level and even, and
here I want to add a little I also do question a large part of what is taught even in universities
because I ll come to it, a lot of it is while yes somewhere in there you can find all of
this but the way the questions in the test papers are put up, the bits that are emphasised
its all much more subtly done in a way that it ends up in a certain only in one certain
[hand gestures] dhara. Audience 11: So what you are essentially suggesting
towards is some larger conspiracy here In a sense yes. I would say is that that brings
into question the entire study, the subject, everybody who s related to Indian history
and the institution of Yes sir it is the fact and that I find something And you will be
amazed at the some discomfort. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yes I ll tell you why.
You will be amazed to the extent to which most of the history we today read is controlled
by an extremely tiny group of people and I will not go into the long debate on this because
I want to finish this discussion, but it will not require you too much time to look into
this to discover. In fact it s a tiny cabal who have systematically kept out for almost
7 decades alternative use of history. In relatively recent times, people like Upinder who are
somewhat more openminded and have brought in some of these facts but really Dr. Upinder
Singh if anything is an exception to this rule. People like Nayanjot Lahiri for example
I just gave you the book on Ashoka. She has written a book on Ashoka using the Ashokavadana
as one of the key texts in that and simply does not mention many of the dubious things
I mean I would have been at least thought that it was worth mentioning some of the facts
that do not go along with her narrative. Audience 11: But what you are here quoting
is an anecdote to sort of colour the Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No no ofcourse I just
I cannot give you the statistics of it Exactly. but there are plenty of this and I mean and
this is even worse when non-Indians were and there are some history writing that are appalling,
I mean there s a book on Ashoka I m just sticking out Ashoka because otherwise we will go into
all kinds of different things so just on Ashoka. [hand gesture] One person, one this thing.
There s a book written by this gentleman called Charles Allen, okay I don t know if anybody
would have read this book by Charles Allen on Ashoka. Now its quite interesting. 90 percent
of that book has nothing to do with Ashoka. Most of the book is about how wonderful the
Europeans were to have rediscovered a king who the Indians had forgotten. And essentially
what he says, and its quite patronising and in fact almost racist where how he says that
you know you Indians don t know what is good for you and don t even know your history,
it required us white chaps to come and tell you what it is. That is essentially what he
says in that book. Its quite amazing that he gets away with it. I mean if he had done
an equivalent thing today in about black history in America, he would have been lynched. But
please read this book to just understand how this historical narrative is simply told in
this particular way [smiles]. Audience 11: Sure. One final question and
this is related to the issue you raised about fabian socialism and how it might have coloured
you know how we see Ashoka. But you know that might be the case okay let me grant you as
much. But what about the Aryan Invasion Theory ? And you know there are reasons why the Aryan
Invasion Theory was at certain points in time and we can have differing views on that. But
why would, say for example Nehru and his cabal sort of propound the Aryan Invasion Theory
when while it might have been socialistic it was also deeply nationalist. We were talking
about a new country merging at that point in time
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: So what happened is in exchange for not messing with existing history
because that was not their focus, they were trying to insert things that were important
to them so this was one not important. Secondly it is quite interesting I began to look into
this is that they continued to perpetuate certain myths which were colonial era for
one of them being that the Indians never had a sense of being a country. Okay now I have
actually Land of Seven Rivers brought this out very clearly Indians for a very long time
had a sense of being a civilizational nation. Maybe not quite a political nation but a civilizational
nation Sir we have had I will just finish let me finish this had a sense of this. By
incidentally this is true of many other countries it s not unique to India. The Chinese have
for a very long time had a sense of being a civilization, the Greeks fought with each
other all the time but they had a very clear sense of being a civilizational nation and
every time the Persians turned up they united. So the fact is that we have also similarly
had a sense of being a civilizational nation for a long time. Yet this is actually systematically
down played in our text books till very recently. And not only that, as a corollary to it the
idea that Hinduism for example is not a religion. Now why get into this? Because it again serves
a purpose. After all, if a nation has existed for thousands of years you cannot have a Father
of the Nation , particularly not one in 20th century. You cannot have the Chacha of the
Nation [laughter]. You see, so it has got a lot to do with the politics of it. By simply
perpetuating a previous thing because it continues to serve a certain purpose.
Audience 12: No but there s a perfect example of sorry to butt in, but how to choose also
which white voice we want to hear? We want to hear when we but we don t want to hear
Diana Eck who s the head of the Or Will Durant. Or Will Durant but Diana Eck is still living
whose wonderful book India: A Sacred Geography talks about how and she uses the example of
Simon on how through the footsteps of the pilgrims the boundaries of India, the borders
of India, the landscape borders of India are perfectly depicted for thousands of years.
But that s not you will never hear anybody celebrating Diana Eck at all in India but
you will celebrate and I m only saying I m not saying is not good or bad, I m saying
I m actually adding to what Sanjeev is saying and absolutely agreeing with him that there
is that s a political choice on which voice you want to hear is basically a political
choice. And that choice is I have no problem I don t think Sanjeev has a problem with anybody
making their political choice as long as we know that there are options.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: You see the state power and patronage has been used for a certain
way, I m just pointing out that there are other ways of thinking about the world. I
think we really need to end this. There is a lady who has been really raising I ll then
come to you. Okay can we take both questions and then I ll answer and then we ll stop [laughter].
Audience 13: Yeah hi. Okay I would like to first say that I have been a history student
in Delhi University nearly 30 years back. I m glad we had professors who told us what
history you re learning is crap. Excellent Okay? And we were told the correct history
is this but please write these answers to get marks.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: [applause and laughter] Excellent. I am so happy.
Audience 13: Would you believe it? Since then I have been waiting for people like you to
appear and to challenge the history that we are reading. My daughter is a history student
today and she does not like Indian history, the way it is taught, the way what we are
learning. She wants it to be in a she prefers German, I mean she prefers the you know the
Greek history, the Roman history, the Egyptian history because they are actually rooted in
their culture and telling history the way it was by those people. So she I mean if I
tell her today she has missed something she s going to howl because she would have loved
to be here and attend this session because hopefully she will become a history student
in the future and Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Hopefully also a history
writer because we need somebody to write those new histories [laughter].
Audience 13: And yes and she is interested in writing so I really would have liked her
to be here [Rahul Dewan speaks] we will follow up on this because Rahul is her mausa [laughter].
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Okay so I have a gentleman there so yeah sorry.
Audience 13: I just wanted to ask something. Sorry yeah I m saying you re doing amazing
work and I really applaud it from the core of my heart. I want to know what are the challenges
you are facing here? Because I m sure you are to be
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: I ll tell you I ll tell you the main challenge I face is the fact
that I do this for entertainment. I am an economist by profession, I also design cities
and I have 2 or 3 other things I do. This I happen to do on the side and I don t have
time and I fund everything I do. So I don t have the challenges others have which is
they need if you re an academic you need grants and all that, I fund everything. Two
Audience 13: No I mean I was talking in terms of
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No no I ll explain what my-my problem
Audience 13: how you and the you know like the group
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No so I have no problem no it makes no difference is you know what
I ve done is I ve by passed them. I write popular history I sell many more books than
all of them combined and so it makes no difference to me at all. My problem is simply writing
enough of it. Right. I don t need grants I don t need anything. I simply don t have time
to write the stuff I know. I m writing a book which will come out in August. I ve already
written another one because which will come out but that s not history that s something
else that s fiction. And I m also doing other profession so my real problem is I need an
army of young people like your daughter to take up some of these subjects. I can give
them really interesting stuff, tell them where to find the material. I simply do not have
mind space to write Audience 13: I ll get her for you [laughter].
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah that s what I need, that s my main 99 percent of my problem [laughter].
Yeah? [hand gesture]. Audience 14: I m an engineer by profession.
So you did a good task of telling us that there has been exclusions in history. Some
events has been excluded from this academics. And simultaneously you told that in 1947 what
we adopted was a not a Indian perspective that was a some socialist perspective. My
first question is why socialism cannot be an Indian perspective? First question. It
can be. But you mentioned that was Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No no my objection is
to it being an exclusive view after all there are not all Indians are socialist, not all
Indians believe in Nehru. So all my problem essentially is the systematic use of the state
control and state patronage to essentially perpetuate a certain line of history that
suited a certain political class. I am not saying that history books should now be changed
and everything should now have the [hand gestures] sang perspective of history or whatever it
is. I m saying that be honest about the facts and those facts incidentally keep evolving
because we find out more things about it. And two, tell people that given these facts,
this is very likely these are the 2 or 3 things that possibly happened. One, it will make
history a lot more interesting. Two, it will be a lot more honest. And I certainly do not
think that it should be allowed that you have a tiny cabal of people that you know propped
up by state patronage who can then tell us what to think about our past.
Audience 14: So are you saying that state patronage will stop in the future?
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: At the very least you need to have variety. Don t give patronage
to like 3 people who happen to be and many of those cases [Audience 14 speaks] Yeah let
there be other different views, Okay. Let there be let 1000 flowers bloom.
Audience 14: One more thing you said that Yes. we are not able to get knowledge about
Mewar and correct history of Mewar but still I feel proud of Mewar kingdom.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No no I can assure you its not because of your textbooks. It may
be more likely because of Amar Chitra Katha [laughter].
Audience 14: No no I haven t read anything about Mewar other than my textbook but still
I feel proud of Mewar. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Haan yes so therefore,
the point I m making is we have had to be we have
Audience 14: But I still feel proud of Indian history also. Why so?
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Because as I said these other alternative histories have somehow survived
because of other alternative ways. But the state was trying very hard to [laughter] push
us in one direction. Audience 14: Okay but one more thing. There
are a lot of people in in the South Delhi region who will tell anywhere who will go
there that Qutab Minar was built by Prithviraj Chauhan. There are many
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Qutab Minar was not built it was built on top of temples built by Prithviraj
Chauhan that s actually a fact. Audience 14: Yeah there are many people who
are claiming that this was built by Prithviraj Chauhan but when we try to this finding the
truth of history, definitely I will become less proud of Mewar kingdom.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Why? Audience 14: Because there are okay which
kind of big war Maharana Pratap has won? Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Why? Maharana Pratap was
not famous for being a construction guy. Audience 14: Nahi nahi he is famous for his
valour and bravery. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Yeah so it doesn t matter
if he didn t build some temples some tall towers. Nobody it was built by Qutubuddin
Aibak. I don t think even the Marxists think he was a good chap [laughter].
Audience 14: Okay you told us a different thing that 90 percent of history we are reading
is incorrect. Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: A very large proportion.
90 or not is a matter opinion [laughter]. Audience 14: Okay you can say that we are
not reading a major part of history but you should not say that we are reading incorrect
history Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Lot of part of it is.
No no see 2 points are made. One of them is that there are interpretations, we are not
telling people of different interpretations. That is one part. I agree that people can
have interpretations but my first and most biggest objection is that the facts are wrong.
I just gave you one example where I told you about Ashoka. I also mentioned about Aryan
invasion much more in a much shorter time, I can give you lots of evidence on it. But
there are lots I mean you can go on and on and on. Large parts of our history are actually
blatant lies. I mean, for example, just to give you one example so somebody did bring
up my ancestor so I should bring them up myself now [laughter]. Now as it happened to be,
there are many streams of people who fought for Indian independence. Now it happens to
be that the revolutionaries were a very important part of that history or now Bhagat Singh has
suddenly been dug up from this thing but in fact he was hardly the only person. There
was a huge thing there was something called the Gadar Movement which during the first
World War almost succeeded in throwing the British out. And it came within 48 hours of
that revolt happening that somebody squealed and the British suppressed it. But it was
within 48 hours, very short distance [hand gesture]. There were several major insurrections
through Indian history ultimately ending with something of course you have all heard of
the INA and Netaji thanks to the recent this thing, but then it ultimately culminated in
something called Great Naval Revolt of Bombay in 1946. In which 20000 sailors mainly in
Bombay but also in Karachi, Calcutta and other places basically went on strike and they were
not only that, they were in control of a large numbers of ships to the extent and these were
hard earned, this is 1946. These guys are not random sailors who just joined they fought
the second World War. They are experienced guys, they know how to control these ships
they had ammo, they could have taken over in fact Bombay in fact they effectively controlled
Bombay for a couple of days. They were not given any political leadership and then they
laid down their arms that s a different story why they did that, but the fact I am telling
you that was in my view and in the view of many eminent British politicians of that time
including Attlee, who was the Prime Minister of Britain the key factor why India got independence
the following year because essentially they were in no longer in control of the British-Indian
armed forces and so this is not taught to us anywhere in our texts. Far from that, the
soldiers of INA when they came back were never taken back into the Indian army. The sailors
of the revolt of 1946 were thrown out, they were never taken back into the Navy. Why?
Because it did not serve a certain narrative. Audience 14: Purpose, yeah.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: That s why. Audience 14: Sir one more thing
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: No I really have to stop now. Yeah?
Audience 15: temples were built by them. Is it a fact or not? [laughter] They claim that.
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: I don t know, well they as I said you have to provide I m willing
to that perspective but they have to provide evidence [laughter].
Audience 15: Okay thank you. I thought you will throw some light. But we are
Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal: Umm thank you.
Read his triseries on Indian history.
Read 2 of his books till now.
Hadn't heard of him, but just got sucked into the video. Fantastic stuff
Books available in amazon or flipcart ? Also how do i download ? Want to share in whatsapp.
His books are pretty awesome too.
Glad to see people already know about him, and some are just discovering him.
Here is another post with his video to more detailed and fascinating facts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Chodi/comments/gpy0do/did_you_know_indian_naval_merchants_have_been/
There are other lesser known young brathas who are trying to help. Let's help them too.
Here is one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Chodi/comments/gpgkun/this_virat_bhrata_deserves_more_likes_on_youtube/
One more, we need to teach our children while they are young: https://www.reddit.com/r/Chodi/comments/gls4jy/bhratas_and_bhaginis_please_share_with_nri_abcd/