Friday, September 15, 2017

Whose history is it anyways!

"The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns."
—Swami Sivananda (Indian, 1887-1963)
Word for the day
Gramarye (n)
Occult learning; magic
Malice towards none
PM Modi invited his friend Shinzo Abe directly to Ahmedabad, to keep him away from RaGa's charm!!
First random thought this morning
"Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged."
Abraham Lincoln (in the context of The American Civil War of 1861-1865)

Whose history is it anyways!

A couple of days ago, the deputy CM of UP Shri Dinesh Sharma reportedly emphasized that Mughal emperors were not our ancestors but looters and the Uttar Pradesh government would change the syllabus accordingly to reflect this fact.
"Mughal rulers were not our ancestors but looters. We consider Mughal rulers who did wrong acts as looters. Those who have done good work, we praise. Babar and Aurangzeb were looters. We do not oppose Bahadur Shah Zafar as he extended support to Mangal Pandey," Sharma told reporters here.
He reportedly said the government planned to bring "necessary changes" in the school syllabus. "If Akbar had done any good work, it will remain in pages of history. It will be historians who will decide what place Akbar gets," he said.
"A culture where a son kills his father for the throne or the hands of Taj Mahal builder are chopped off cannot be our culture. Our culture honours artistes and scientists. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam is credited for the successful nuclear test, and we honored him."
As per media reports, the UP CM Yogi Adityanath had also stated in May that Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babar were invaders and that the problems of the country would disappear after the truth is accepted. He had in the same event also called Maharana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh and Chhatrapati Shivaji role models.
Recently, Maharashtra state board had removed a chapter on the Mughals from its class VII history books.
These recent assertions of BJP leaders have been mostly seen from the prisms of secularism vs. communalism, bigotry vs. nationalism, majoritism vs. inclusiveness.
The critics have highlighted this as a dangerous trend and attack on the very core of the pluralistic and diverse Indian society. In their view, this could damage the social fabric of the country beyond repair thus endangering the integrity of the country itself.
The supporters are terming it as renaissance of sorts, whereby all malefic distortions, digressions and misconception created by the left leaning elite about great Indian history would be corrected, ending the whole debate over secular vs. communal divide and great Aryan invasion theory. In their view, these corrections should pave the way for holistic progress of the country.
In my view, the debate suffers from myopia aggravated by deep prejudices, insecurities and complexes. Hence, I find this debate at political level totally frivolous and avoidable.
Usually, I would not bother about issues which in my view are rather frivolous to the present day socio-economic context. But given the intensity of the debate and potential economic fall outs that it could have, I need to review my investment strategy in this light....to continue

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