The role of history is always dubious. There is this historians-archeologists history and there is a popular history which common people would love to believe. Both have different purpose in society.
For me the real history or historians -history is to learn lessons from the mistakes of others in the past. So that we don't repeat them and advance the society. This type of history is for decision makers. The case studies on rise or fall of companies given to MBA students fall in to this category. The best history book which was written in similar way is Machiavelli's " The Prince". He read history, drew conclusions from it, wrote a book so that a future king can take advantage of it. The ordinary history text books which offer no lesson are just books with events sorted in chronological order. They offer nothing for the progress of society.
And there is a problem with history text books in our curriculum. We read them to pass the exams without understanding. When the knowledge doesn't sink in, we tend to forget it and believe whatever others say later. The best example is " India never attacked another nation in the last ten thousand years. But Indus valley civilisation started just 5 thousand years back , and India didn't have this shape before Briton established its hold on India. If you had studied the history you would understand that the history is was written with swords using blood as ink on parchment of treachery under the light of will to expand kingdom.
We were lead to believe that, others waged war on India just to loot and destroy the temples. In fact, except Mohammed of Ghori and Huns of Mongolia everybody else who invaded India, settled down in here and made it their own country. Except for Alexander and Europeans imperialism was the rare philosophy by which India was ruled.
The Facebook shared pics lead us believe that Muslims are united in ruling India i.e they see themselves as Muslims ruling a Hindu territory, but they ruled like any other king of the world. Even they waged wars against other Muslim nations. But in reality , they have cheated each other, they have used marriage alliances to expand territory , their feudal lords declared independence when the ruler at the central is dead. Muslim kings of Iran invaded mughal empire to loot the wealth. Sher shah suri, drove away Humayun, the son of Babar and father of Akbar, from Delhi and looted it. Similar stories happened before Islam in India.
The popular history will have us believe that through out the history the hatred between Hindus and Muslims prevailed. This is also wrong. Akbar and many kings of Vijayanagara empire have had ministers and army generals from other religions. When the 1857 revolt started in kanpoor, the soldiers both Muslim n Hindu, went to Bahadur shah 2 , the last Mughal king and convinced him to lead the revolt. If the perpetual hostility was true , it would not have happened. Of course the poor old man was driven out of Indian main land by British for leading the revolt after ruthlessly crushing the revolt.
Our history is full of kings who murdered their fathers and brothers to sit on the throne. It's full of wars to get the important cities and ports under their control. Popular history won't mention but. The Hindu kingdoms occupied Afghanistan. Popular history totally forgets to mention the naval power. It doesn't talk on how Hindu kingdom expanded till Indonesia.
Of course to make my point that greed beyond religion, I have been saying Muslim kingdoms and Hindu kingdoms. In fact, except for shivaji, no other king rebelled or waged war because of that ideology. Its always wealth and power which played the crucial role. There was so much hostility between the kings of India( of both religions), they thought the invasion from foreign land is the opportunity to make friendship and defeat their enemy. Alexander, Babar and Europeans received welcome because of the same reason.
Now let's come to the end of medieval history of India. Unfortunately, we believe that British came with vast navy power in the disguise of business and occupied India. Again, its a false notion. When Europeans came for spices, our kings were too friendly with them ( centuries later, still it's true, we are too friendly to a foreigner than our neighbor ) , even allowed them to build fortresses. Later, when Europeans become strong , our kings made a pact to get military help , in return they allowed them to collect taxes in a particular area. Once Europeans got hold of power to collect taxes, they fought among themselves, sided with rival kings and started occupying the territories. And British became the winner in the end.
Slowly , British started recruiting Indians into their army and the army become so vast that Indian kings were afraid to pick a fight with them. It became obvious that , British could occupy any kingdom if they wanted, but that's not why they came, they came for wealth and business. So they have made vassal kings who will pay taxes to them. This way they don't have burden themselves with day to day administration of the people, but will get money. Most of our kings reluctantly agreed to that, but they were happy to accept that scheme, because, they get to rule their kingdom. This led to increase of taxes on people, because the vassal king had a kingdom to maintain and he has to pay money to British for allowing to keep his throne. Citizens are not happy but kings were happy to be allowed to kept their thrones and crowns.
This setup was working fine until British expanded their business ventures and become too greedy. A fellow called Dalhousie devised a plan which expanded British- India. The plan is called "doctrine of lapse ", according to which, the vassal kingdom will be annexed to the British- India in the absence of a natural heir. This caused tussle between laxmi bai of Jhansi ( her name is not Jhansi Laxmi, her name is Laxmi , Queen of kindgom Jhansi, just like we mistake for Mohammed Ghori. He was from area called Ghori and his name is Mohammed). When she adopted a male child to continue the succession of throne, British didnt accept the adoption and were advancing to annex her kingdom and then , she joined the revolt. People might hate me for saying this , but she didn't fight for the freedom of her kingdoms, its already a vsssal state, but she fought for her family line to sit on the throne.
Coming to modern history, there were many half truths in our text books. Usually we forget the role of Ali brothers, and our text books don't mention much of Muslim leaders except for few who worked with congress, which led us to believe that the whole Muslim community was absent in the India's struggle for independence.
Is it because of the India pakistan enmity or because of some other reason, we never know. May be we have to read pakistan text books to know the full story.
Modern history of india is most distorted of all which our political parties still use to get votes. It usually resolves around the name most of us would love to hate, I.e Gandhi. I pity MK Gandhi, more than I admire him. He is the only fellow who seems to have a better understanding of Hinduism , but was muslim supporter because of his liberal views. He was the one who fought against British policy of " divide and rule " and hated by lower castes of Hinduism for that. He interlinked independence movement with social movement. Movements like forceful entry for untouchables were brain children of him. Nobody seems to remember that. When British government wants to setup a separate electorate for dalits , just like it already did with muslims, he started a fast unto death to stop it. A nation must have its people united with religious or caste discrimination. If govt decides to divide them in the name of religion, elections, the nation can't be united for ever. But fans of Ambedkar usually miss that point and claim that Gandhi worked against them. Discrimination could be ended by uniting people not by dividing them.
There is a false rumour that, MK Gandhi, adopted Indira Gandhi. Indira married Firoze shah Gandhi, no relation with MK Gandhi.
Till congress leaders come to us say that, if they come to power they would bring " Indiramma rajyam ", where the famous part of indiramma rajyam is national emergency which she made to save her prime minister seat.
" who control the present, controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future" said George orwell in his book 1984. Congress party used that phenomena a lot in post Rajiv Gandhi politics. Half of the government programs are named after Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi. Their sculptures are more in number than total number of sculptures of all independence fighters. This way later generations might think that, Idira and Rajiv were massleaders and did so much good work for india. Of course, some of their works were appreciatable but many were controversial. Indira was the socialist who nationalised banks and Rajiv came to throne because of symphony of his mother's dead and lost power after five years. He became PM with the support of 401 members in Loksabha and got only 150 seats at the end of five years. Sculptures rather than votes made him popular.
Finally, Ramjanmabhumi. There is no better example than this for the mislead history. There was a temple, a muslim invader demolished it and built a mosque. Even archeology department accepts to it. But the popular notion is , thats the place lord Rama took birth. Who told people that, at the very place lord Rama was born. Political drama or Karasevaks got hold of birth certificate of Lord Rama ?
