The Untold History Of India

People have since time immemorial written or told the history of their land, culture, civilization from their own point of view. In my opinion, we somehow manage to tell India’s history from the point of view of foreign invaders. The British textbooks, quite shockingly tell their history and completely erase any trace of their wretched colonial legacy. On the other hand Indian school textbooks are full of the dark days of colonialism. It is full of tales of successive Turkish invaders who either looted our land or stayed here and ruled. They tell us about how Mahmud Ghazni looted the Somnath temple in 1025 quickly followed by Prithviraj Chauhan’s defeat at the hand of Mohammed Ghuri in 1192 which opened the gates of India to foreign rulers. Surprisingly they forget to mention Suhel Dev Pasi, who in the battle of Bahraich in 1034 defeated the Turkish invader Ghazi Salar Masud whose army was 3 times that of Suhel Dev Pasi. The Turks were so traumatized that they did not dare enter India for the next 150 years.

 It is these events which do not find any place in our history textbooks that I wish to tell and to condemn those rulers, empires, incidents that according to me did almost nothing to further the interest and the well-being of our ancestors and which have been so elaborately told by our textbooks. Also, I wish to tell some facts that we can be quite proud of and which again find no place in our school texts.

The Mughals were at the height of their power from 1526 to 1707 when Aurangzeb died. Of course, the Mughals were existent even after that but their power and authority had been greatly reduced and had been confined to Delhi which also perhaps many would argue was nominal. At their peak they faced resistance notably from the Marathas led by Shivaji and the Rajputs. There was another little known kingdom known as the Ahom kingdom which resisted the Mughals. It was the Ahom kings of Assam led by Lachit Borpukhan who handed Aurangzeb his first major defeat in the battle of Saraighat. The odds were heavily stacked against the outnumbered and outgunned Ahoms. Realizing this, Lachit Borpukhan drew the Mughals towards Brahmaputra and fought them on the Brahmaputra completely taking away the Mughal advantage of superior artillery and elephants. It was an emphatic victory for the Ahoms which halted Mughal march further east. It ignited a sense of belief in India that the Mughals could indeed be defeated in open battle. However the sad part is nobody is taught about the Ahoms and Lachit Borpukhan in their school except perhaps in Assam.

Another thing which I find surprising is the Marathas do not find any mention in our school texts. In fact, the Maratha Empire at its peak in 1750s under Peshwa Balaji Bajirao (Nanasaheb) was bigger than the Mughal empire under Akbar. The Marathas ruled over major parts of India for approximately a hundred years. The British took the power from the Marathas and not the Mughals. Peshwa Bajirao I in fact never lost a battle in his life. A rare feat which not even Napoleon could achieve. He was a military genius of the kind the world has seen quite few which I know not from reading Indian school texts but as told by the great British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery who famously defeated Field Marshall Rommel at the battle of El-Alamein during world war 2. It is embarrassing that a British Field Marshall called him a military genius and one of the greatest generals and he finds no mention in our school textbooks.

I have read some accounts of historians who have written of the British Raj in India calling it a ‘Jolly good thing’ ‘ushering modernity into the Indian Society’ ‘The raj bought Capitalism to India’s shores’ and so on. I vehemently disagree with this narrative being built up. The next two lines will tell you why I say so. According to the research of Angus Maddison which is accepted around the world, when the Bristish landed on our shores, India’s share of world income was 25%. To put it in perspective the US’s share of world income today is 14%. When Britain set foot in India we were a global economic superpower almost twice the size of what America is today and we had been so for at least 500 years before that according to well established data. When the British left India 85% of our population was below the designated poverty line. This quite sums up the tyrannical rule of the British in India. India’s dominance in textiles is well known but we were also prolific shipbuilders until the House of Commons forbade ships made in India from plying the lucrative trade routes and International waters crippling our shipbuilding industry. Indian Ships made of teak and mahogany lasted 25 years on the high seas whereas the average European ships made of fur or pine barely lasted for 6 or 7 years. More than 30 lakh people died in the infamous Bengal famine of 1943 as a matter of conscious British policy. When Churchill was told about the extent of starvation by Viceroy Wavell, he replied “The starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks”. As a matter of fact famines can be easily avoided by proper food management. Independent India never had a famine remotely as severe as those experienced during the Raj. As Shashi Tharoor rightly put it “The British incorporated the hindi word ‘loot’ not only in their dictionary but also in their habits”.

We are a land where 3 major Religions of the world originated. The world’s second oldest mosque is in India and it is quite fascinating that the idea of directive principles of state policy in our Constitution finds its origin in the papal records of Pope Innocent III. Plastic surgery was first done in India as reported by 2 British physicians who came to India. Arguably Aryabhatta predicted that the earth was round and correctly estimated the circumference of the Earth much before Copernicus or Galileo.

I have missed a lot of things, especially many things before 1000 AD which was an even more glorious period but the crux I want to say is that it is ‘our’ history that needs to be told which will not only make school history books much more interesting but also create a sense of pride among us students. No wonder students don’t like history, it is because while reading our school texts we get a sense that we are always getting a thrashing and none of us like reading stories of our defeat, do we?