colonial paradigm of indian history
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It is a tribute to the persistence and tenacity of the colonial overlords that dominated the Indiansubcontinent for a relatively short period of 200 years that the prevailing paradigm on the origins andchronology of our civilization is largely constructed by them. Such a paradigm which we shall define asthe Colonial Paradigm, while substantially erroneous, is posited on certain assumptions. The keyassumption is that the civilization that remains extant has been brought into the area by migrating racessuch as the Aryans, and in fact some would argue, that such a statement holds also for the so calledDravidians of India. According to such a narrative everything that was worth preserving has beenhanded down to us over the centuries by migrations, within the last 3 1/2 millennia, into thesubcontinent, from somewhere else. It is also true that the history that is taught the children of Indiatoday is vastly at variance with the puranic accounts handed down to us over several millennia. It is tostate it without any embellishments, a revised history that is completely at odds with the traditionalhistory of India. Even so great an effort as the History and Culture of the Indian people edited by RCMajumdar, the most famous of Indian historians at the time of Independence accepts the basicframework of the History of India as revised by the British colonialists. Fifty years after independencethe narrative has not changed and the banner of the colonial version of history is now borne by theIndian left including the Communists and the rump of the Congress party left behind after successivedefections from its fold and whose only common ideology is the adulation of the family of India’s firstPrime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, despite the fact that the current generation of that family shareneither the scholarship that he exhibited in his writings, not the deep sense of commitment that he feltfor the betterment of his people and the democratic principles enshrined in the constitution which hewas so keen to preserveTRANSCRIPT
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