It is far from easy to review or even describe this book. One might compare it to a necklace of brilliant gems covering a wide expanse of throat and shoulders of history, with connections barely visible, and one who knows the connections is better off than the reader who is unfamiliar with the general history. At that one has to know more than the history officially taught, too, because often that is written by rulers and conquerors and sometimes not corrected by the conquered survivors, not effectively anyway.
One of such myths is the theory of separate races and invasion of India at some ancient date by Aryans as a race now occupying the northern part. This was sheer propaganda to suit the then rulers in more than one way - obviously if the country is full of people who were outsiders in the first place they have no moral standing to protest any further and later conquerors and rulers, for one; and it helps to divide the nation into more warring factions of any idiots who can easily believe this propaganda, for another. Which did happen, with a portrait of the nation being painted to make it look like an ancient variation of one more "new world" much like Australia or US of a few centuries ago till now, and people using this theory for political propaganda to divide the nation into warring factions and worse.
The author of this, Sanyal, like a few other sensible people, no longer believes the Aryan Invasion of India theory - I wish I could say a growing number, but often the colonial mindset prevails over sense or science or evidence and proof, and there is no shortage of those that insist on still believing the past and amply debunked nonsense and lies. Still, it is good to see even one more person who does see that not only there is no evidence of it much less proof, on the contrary it makes no sense to match the evidence of archaeology and any other material one could consider such as documents or legends and tradition (the latter all claimed to be unimportant by the proponents of the Aryan invasion theory, of necessity, so they could browbeat the ruled population by claiming all their knowledge was unimportant).
Sanyal begins with geography of India of ancient era, with tectonic shifts and India drifting to meet Asia, the consequent rise of Himaalaya (which incidentally has always been a part of Indian tradition but had to be discovered with scientific evidence of marine fossils at those heights before the legends could be said to be not merely superstition - although those against history and tradition and knowledge of India for sake of vested interests of conquest of soul of India would still have you think it was merely coincidence the legends of India spoke of rise of Himaalaya from oceans and they are all false anyway). He looks at various sources for his discourse re ancient times, into archaeology and Veda and more and proceeds from there until now - with economy and history and geography of the nation all related, and the context of relations of various sort with the rest of the world as well.
There is much to notice here for sheer facts not often given in other places, again due to political reasons. Numbers and more re partition of India, facts known but suppressed for sake of propaganda to the contrary re Kashmir and Bangladesh, and more. One wishes he had more time and space to fill out the bare skeleton that this work seems after finishing it, however tough the reading initially because it needs so much attention and repeat reading to digest it. It probably shall get repeat reading after finishing it too.
Sunday, May 18, 2014.
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