This article is not an attempt to rewrite the history or to change or distort facts but to put a different narrative which might be unacceptable to many in mainstream social and national landscape.
India is known by many names to its citizens. Some call it Bharat, some know its as Hindustan, some called it Aryavrata. Regardless of names that has been attributed to this country or land specifically it is important to understand that India/Bharat/Hindustan is not a country with man made boundaries on paper but a ‘single piece‘ of land, river, forests, lakes, mountains. We have to understand the geography which gave birth to a great civilization which was also the ‘first‘ ever civilized society ever to be formed anywhere in the world. It was formed some 5000-7000 years ago. Now, its not necessarily meant that older always means better or greater in some sense. No, not really. As we look back in history we see barbarians, tribals, and people with limited means and knowledge of how to conduct life in a more healthy, respectfully and peaceful manner. Apart from that, this society of Ancient India, was known as Vedic Civilization. Mainly because of invaluable contribution made by intelligent people of that times known as Rishis/Sages. These were scientists, researchers who had one of the brilliants minds in the world and were actually well ahead of their times. Some of them popular ones are :- Maharshi Valmiki(The Ramayana), Maharshi Vashistha(The Mahabharata/BhagvatGita), Seven Sages(SuptRishis), Sushrit(The first surgeon ever), Aryabhatta(invented ‘0’, discovered gravity, found the value of ‘pi’, discoveries in astronomy) and so on. This civilization which existed for some 2500 years was Golden age for Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, Spiritualism and ancient technology. The history of India is too old to be preserved, remembered, an to teach in schools. Many ancient texts are actually incomprehensible as the language they were written into has extinguished long ago. Sanskrit being the oldest and mostly used language in this period holds a prominent position in the family of languages. Its grammar was given by Patanjali known as Devnagri, is actually used by many other regional languages as well by some variance. As time evolved many words lost their meaning and new words were evolved. With changing demographics new people came in from ‘outside’ and bring their own culture, heritage, clothing, food, languages, dialect. Due to this the “PURITY“of Ancient Indian race, also known as many by “ARYANS“, was affected. Not in a bad manner but in good. India was already rich in natural resources, prosperity, knowledge, peace, a cluster of well formed and ruled states. This gave rise to rich monarchies which in turn gave birth to mega-cities, capitals, temples and forts. As people from both east and west came to India and settled so did many Indians who traveled to vast distances. They spread knowledge of Science and Mathematics to west and also learnt things in exchange. During that period India or Bharat as they used to called then, had relations with Babylon and Mesopotamia in Middle East. India had always good relations with its neighbors both in East and West. India had good trade with both China and with region we know as today’s Middle East. The Silk Route which is known mainly for Silk, actually had its importance because of geographical location of India which is nothing short of Golden Luck. It was the reason that India’s geographical location made it to its advantage as it can trade both from east and west and act as a Trade hub. From North in Gandhar(today’s Kandhar in Afghanistan) to East in Trivishtap(Today’s Tibet) and so on, the 2500 km long Himalayan Terrain act as a Wall which protects India from both Cold winds from Northern hemisphere and any attacks from Mongols and Chinese. This perfect Geo-location provided advantages to Indian civilization for 7000 years and still does.
Its is impossible to date back the earliest sign of Human civilization or cities or collective villages of human beings in India or anywhere else due to lack of remnants of those people and their work such as artificats or literature(possibly!). The carbon dating of Vedas proves they are at least 5000 years old. And the interesting part is there are four Vedas and all of them were written or developed by many generations of sages and their students in 2000 years. These four Vedas are : Rigveda(oldest), Samveda, Yajurveda, Arthavveda.
Gods have a very auspicious and special role in this era. Its is quite possible that Men or Women with immeasurable physical strength and intelligent minds and strong sense of nature and its presence, actually lived and made civilization prospered. These people must have been praised or remembered by their followers or believers to be as Gods during later generations. But due to continuous distortion of facts and stories made by old people to pass the rich history on to younger generations in order to teach them values and importance of their surroundings such as family, village, forest, trees, rivers, ponds, lakes, birds and animals, a mythology has nourished over period of thousands of years. This has resulted into unexplainable tales of Vimanas(Ancient Planes), demons and gods to fight them. This happened so that modern people can give respect to fellow living creatures and protect them instead of harming them or using them unnecessarily.
This period of Knowledge, innovation, peace and righteousness was actually referred to as Golden Period, also India used to be called Golden Bird, not just for this civilization’s obsession with glittering stone but due to the prosperity and superiority relative to its neighbors or trading partners.
But even that is not the whole story. We know now that Hindi is the distorted or diversified version of Sanskrit which will later remained only to the most highly intellectuals and researchers such as Brahmins and Purohits who used to advice Rulers on behalf of knowledge embedded in Vedas, Puranas and other important literature.
Hindi is not too old yet not too amateur language. It has developed into a fine tune language with its own literature, writers, followers, speakers. Its the primary language of more than 50% of Indians. However, the dialect and accuracy differs from people to people and places to places.
India, during its 7000 old history has developed into a country or region with many languages, some of them regional, to local; many food habits, many fashion styles, many living standards and many belief systems. This gives both magnificent diversity, taste, color and spontaneity to its inhabitants but also creates a divide, uncertainty, misunderstanding, difference in mindset and egoistic regional prides which often takes to overpower each other and spread their culture and understanding to other parts of the sub-continent.
The word Hindu originated first in Medieval times when inhabitants of far West(i.e, today’s Saudi Arabia and Gulf) came in contact with Sindhu River(Modern INDUS river) inhabitants. They called this River Hindu as they couldn’t pronounce ‘S’ in their dialect and also named Sindhu Valley civilization as Hindus(Sindhus). Hence, came the name Hindustan.
Hindustan is a conjunction between two Indian words. Perhaps the possibility behind this name should have been like this; when these Arabs came to contact with Sindhis through land route for trade of food and animals(such as horses, goats and camels), they must have somehow tried to communicate their fellow foreign friends and should have asked them their names and the name of their land or village or something like that. Perhaps what they could get from inferences was SINDHU+ISTHAN(Place) = SINDHUSTHAN. Hence the “LAND OF SINDHUS“. But as early Arabs couldn’t pronounce ‘S’ and ‘TH’ as THA not TA, so Sindhusthan became Hindustan(He-in-doos-tan) and not (See-in-doos-than). So HINDUSTAN means LAND OF HINDUS. As we quite know these days. (Politically Incorrect)
This is just a possible story often provided by historian as an excuse because nowhere in Ancient Indian literature or records such as drawings, songs, art, pictography over stones etc refers to a name such as HINDU. However, Vedas give references to Sindhu river and Saraswati river, both of which were divine by the Sages and Vedas. Around both these rivers formed a valley which prospered due to fertile land. Such a civilization in modern archaeological discoveries were found as Mohanjodaro – Haddapa civilization in Today’s Pakistan.
Its another funny story how India got its name as India. Actually as Arabs gave name to the land ‘beyond‘ Sindhu river as Hindustan, so did Britishers. They came to India and found this mess of so many people with so much diversity. So they stuck with original nomenclature and gave Hindustan its name of Indus river(Sindhu). The mentality behind this simple logic with Sindhu and Indian-subcontinent is that India is always seen as one landmass as Europe is seen as one continent. Sindhu provides the entry gate to this Mysterious land of Black Magic, Prosperity, Beautiful Women, Lots of Gold and a cluster of developed civilizations of its own time. So, the land beyond Sindhu/Indus would always be known as Hindustan/India to foreigners.
Its interesting to see Indians mentality to foreigners who came to India seeking adventure, discovery, prosperity, trade, beauty, food/masalas, and other things. There is this term which is often mentioned in early literature such as vedic period(2500 BC) and after that. Its called Mleccha. Its a term which was used often for outsiders. As these outsiders came and established in India over period of hundreds and thousands of years, they became inhabitants of India. However, they brought their own culture, heritage, traditions, language and other things. This caused a class divide in India. The original or earliest inhabitants considered themselves Pure and true heirs of Rulers of India and often looked down on these outsiders as inferior people. There are no evidence that these people were in some form or other were discriminated or socially challenged or boycotted or maybe met with violence or not. But there were no violent inferences inside Indian subcontinent among people. There were many wars between Kingdoms due various political and geographical causes such as to grab more land or to overthrow a king and enslave his wives and to loot the Treasury, build bigger armies for more expansion but very little people know about wars of those days. There used to be some rules such as, there used to be no fighting during nights, no raids during night time in cities and villages due to safety concerns for armies as well. Because most of India was dense forest covering Mountains and rivers, so it was difficult to maneuver in darkness and fight simultaneously. Another rule was women were not to be abused, even the wives and family members were to be respected and given royal treatment as they were the key to the local peace and stability. Homes and villages were not be looted as their was not such need of money. Most of the kingdoms were self-sufficient in resources for providing food, labor and other requirements by themselves. Generally wars were fought to showcase strength and political purge or revenge.
Early India up until 1800/1900 was rich in tribal civilizations. There were thousands of tribes spread through India in jungles, mountains, near rivers which had their own language, way of communication, rituals. However these tribes were mostly introverts and they keep things to themselves and would only protect their jungles and rivers from outsiders.
The question about Aryans and their origins have always astounded researchers. Due to the revival of this word in mid 1800’s by Max Muller. It is believed that Max Muller was given task by Royal Monarchy of Britain to understand the ancient history of INDIA. So he researched and discovered a lot of things about ancient India and knowledge provided in Vedas. Max Muller understood Sanskrit and was a keen researcher in Sanskrit ancient literature. He however as per the orders from his senior officials who gave him the task of translation and understanding of rich heritage of Indian society, did a demeaning work by propagating lies and distortion to Indian history. This was one of the many strategies of Britishers to “DIVIDE AND RULE” India. They knew that India holds the key to knowledge and self-sufficiency. If left free as such, it would again grow up into a giant Economic Superpower and center of trade as it always has been due to its prominent Geo-location and growing Sea trade through Strait of Malacca and Indian Ocean.
This forced Britishers to come up with a strategy to delude and lie to Indians about their own heritage and were always looked down and called as low-life, savage, uncivilized creatures much like their fellows in Africa. Both of which represents the Colonial and Imperial mindset of Britishers, French, Dutch and other Western powers. The purpose of this lie and distortion of history was to remove the literacy, education and pride among Indian people and to ‘mentally enslave’ them such that they forget their own history and become true slaves of White People as has been done to Blacks from Africa.
Britishers and others somehow achieved this partially in their rule of 150+ years by brutality, forced teaching in their education system, systematically destroying temples and by killing priests, by destroying Sanskrit universities, schools etc. Now, its important to mention here that we have not even mentioned the Role of Moughals and how did they affected Indian society and culture as a whole. Aside from that, when Britishers finally left India they divided the country and propagated the fire of sectarian and regional divisions so much that it was impossible to rule India as one country united by its people. In 1947, India got INDEPENDENCE from Britishers as claimed by Historians and Britishers themselves and believed by us INDIANS as we were taught in Schools. However it was no independence or freedom of happiness. Much after 70 years of so called Independence we are still living in the mindset of Slaves and still treat our cultural heritage as old and outdated which has to be forgiven for the sake of modernity.
India was divided into 3 pieces during its independence day. Major part remained India while the other two parts became PAKISTAN(PAK+ISTAN) which means the LAND OF PURE. As this were to be the land of Pure people which were MUSLIMS. Even after being divided in three parts INDIA, EAST PAKISTAN(Today’s Bangladesh) and WEST PAKISTAN(Pakistan only today) under pretext of disharmony between Hindus and Muslims, India still remains a secular state which does not favor neither Hindus nor Muslims. However, under disguise of Secularism and socialism, this sectarian divide has been further increased after 1947 to appease MUSLIM vote bank. This has caused both External and internal violence, threat to national and homeland security, and stability of state as well. Since Independence, there has been more than 1000+ major riots which have resulted into lives of more than 10,000 to 100,000 people. Minor clashes among different religions is common practice in India and may result in 200 to 1000 smaller riots in India every year.
So, it’s a very complex history and complicated society of modern times which aims to achieve prosperity and superiority in trade and academics and military aspects. Even when it is engulfed in regional differences between various states within India, language barriers, social stigmas, sectarian divide, unhappy or tense relationship with its major neighbors Pakistan and China with whom it has fought war in 1948,65,71,99 and 1962 respectively; India can achieve its lost Pride and position in World as Master of Arts, Science, Naval Trade and Warfare, only if it can realize its true nature of its geological importance and could harness the advantages of being in Golden sphere its has always been. Its has to fortify its Western Border which is porous and has always been the major source of Invasion. It has to rebuilt its social and constitutional structure which reflects more local and permanent solutions rather than temporary and borrowed examples from world constitutions. It needs major economic, political and bureaucratic reforms to upgrade its outdated ‘system’ of which its population is fed up from. India has to remove its Slave Mindset and has to give importance to its ancient heritage, culture, knowledge and power. It doesn’t mean that India should go back in time and undo all its efforts it has done past 70 years in technological and scientific aspects. Rather India should upgrade its Education system and introduce students and youngsters with the amazing discoveries and inventions made during Vedic period and after that so that its under-confident, tired and lost population can get inspired, motivated and can dream to work to make INDIA THE SUPERPOWER IT DESERVES TO BE.