Uncovering the Truth

About India's History

(An excerpt from "Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence" by Stephen Knapp)


As we have now investigated the rest of the world for remnants of the global Vedic culture, as presented in my book, we must also focus our attention on India where it still thrives. However, now we will uncover some of India's real history. This will help us understand how much of its glory, beauty, art, music, architecture, and sciences have been falsely attributed to outsiders and foreigners. India has not been given credit where credit is due. India's skills in science, administration, art, architecture, and, of course, spiritual understanding, was once the highest in the world. However, because the emphasis on Vedic knowledge and culture has decreased, and in some cases been ignored, it has led to a weakened condition of the nation. This has allowed the commercial and military invasions into India, which has resulted in such plunder, impoverishment, and enslavement that India is a shadow of what it once was, and in some areas has become full of destitution, disease, and death. Furthermore, much of its real history has been pushed aside, distorted, perverted, and based on misinformation.

An example of this sort of invasion that has caused such a difference in Indian culture, history, and its status in the world is that of the British. The English attempted to divide and conquer India, to ruin the Vedic Aryan civilization, and to demean Indian culture, even to the point of trying to make its own people hate everything that is Indian. This is explained in World-Wide Hindu Culture (pp.165-6) by Dr. S. Venu Gopalacharya. He describes that on July 3, 1835, Lord Macaulay suggested that the only statesmanship of the Britishers to establish permanent imperialist sovereignty over their richest colony, India, was to make the Indians "Englishmen by Taste." This was to be accomplished through "English Education," similar to bringing under control hundreds of elephants by taming a couple of wild elephants. By 1854 when the whole of India came under British rule, Charles Woodraffe, the Director of the Education Department of the Government of India, in his minutes dated July 19, 1854, stated that it was the best opportunity to give effect to Lord Macaulay's suggestion. For getting grains for one year, sowing of corn is necessary; for getting fruits, trees are to be planted. Likewise, to get perennial or permanent service, human beings are to be sown. For erasing illiteracy, primary schools are to be opened. To get officials with less expenditure, secondary education is essential because importing Englishmen for that purpose is impossible. Colleges with English education is unavoidable to make the Indian educated class detest everything Indian, to make them look at it as nothing more than mean and illogical superstitions.

Macaulay's prophecy worked well, both to rule and impoverish the English educated class of Indians as well as their blind followers, the laymen of British India. The factory-made goods of the Britishers found a very good market, and one by one all the handicrafts and home industries lost their charm among the Indians. As the English factories were helped to get raw materials from India at the lowest rates and supply factory-made articles to the Indian consumers, all the home industries of the Indians became extinct within a couple of decades, not being able to compete with them. As English became the official language replacing Sanskrit, some of the educated class started to learn English to earn their living. All those who could not continue their hereditary occupations and learn English became jobless and miserably poor. Taking advantage of the changed situation, the missionaries tried to convert some of the weaker sections to Christianity by several inducements, a program they seem to have tried to continue. However, seeing through this plan, some religious institutions of the Vedic followers, such as the Arya Samaj, Brahmasamaj, Ramakrishna Movement, Shivananda Movement, and others, fought against them.

With the freedom movements lead by Ranade, B. G. Tilak, V. D. Patel, Mahatma Gandhi and others, India finally got political freedom from the British. However, as time went on, the divide and rule policy of the British prospered by the post independent Indian secular rulers, even against Gandhi's and the people's wishes and appeals. The spiral of deterioration of Indian and Vedic culture has continued to this day. Thus, much of the misinformation that has been adopted as Indian history has yet to be corrected. We will look closer at this point shortly.

These are the kinds of invasions that have really affected India, but in the worst way. Another historical invasion that some talk about is the Aryan invasion, from which people think the glory of India began. However, as is becoming more and more apparent, and as we have shown in previous chapters, there has been no direct evidence for any Aryan invasion.

One primary basis for this theory about the Aryan invasion is that languages with Sanskrit affinities exist over a vast region, from Bali to the Baltic. Therefore, it is assumed that there must have been a pre-Sanskrit language that came close to Sanskrit, yet was something different. Whatever this Indo-European language was, it is argued that Lithuanian was the closest to it. Hence, those who spoke the original Indo-European language must have migrated into the region of India, and thence begot the Aryan culture and the Sanskrit language.

However, it would be a more valid conclusion to understand the Vedic culture as it was, and as it continues to profess: That it was a culture that shared its knowledge and spiritual understanding with the world rather than simply conquer areas and control them by force. It was this attitude that impelled them to push their explorations to the remotest lands to spread their knowledge and culture. Therefore, if European languages show a Sanskritic base, and if Sanskrit flourishes in its pristine glory only in India, the conclusion is obvious: It was enterprising Indians who migrated to all other continents. Later on, when links with India snapped over the course of centuries, the European languages retained only traces of Sanskrit while real Sanskrit still flourishes at its source: India.

As Mr. Oak explains in Some Blunders of Indian Historical Research (page 220), "It should be clearly understood that it was the Indians who migrated from their Indo-Gangetic, Punjab, Kashmir and Gandhar home to all parts of the world. The so-called Indo-European languages are all derived from the ancient-most language of India, namely Sanskrit. It is futile to regard Sanskrit as a collateral of languages like Persian and Latin and then try to find their common ancestor. These attempts all derive from the mistaken notion that there were a people called Aryans who lived somewhere in Europe and from there migrated to India. Since there were no such people, there was no fancied language of theirs. What then remains as the sole source of the world's ancient-most culture is not Indo-European, but only the Indo civilization and Indo language, which is Sanskrit."

In light of this, the belief of an "Aryan Race" coming from outside India is, indeed, a blunder of historical research. All references to the Aryans as a race who migrated to India should be deleted from history. There is no evidence that upholds this theory. In fact, the more research we do, the more evidence we find that counters this theory as we shall see as we proceed with this chapter [which continues beyond the length of this excerpt].

One piece of evidence we can consider is that the rishis (sages) in the Rig-veda describe the Sarasvati as a mighty river that flowed directly into the sea. On the banks of this river, rishis performed penance and worship. The Srimad-Bhagavatam also describes how Srila Vyasadeva had his cottage on the banks of the Sarasvati and began compiling the Bhagavatam into a written format at that place. There are also geological researches that have testified to the finding that there has been a considerable length of time, possibly up to 500,000 years, since the Sarasvati River disappeared. Others more logically feel it finally dried up no later than 1800 B.C. In either case, this would lead to the conclusion that the Rig-veda, far from being composed around 1200 B.C. or later as some think, is of immemorial antiquity as is rightly believed by present-day Vedic followers. It was part of a verbal tradition up until Srila Vyasadeva composed it into a written work about 5,000 years ago. The descriptions of the Sarasvati in the ancient Vedic texts help place the age and location of the Vedic culture at no later than 5,000 years ago.

The idea that the Rig-veda is only 3,000 years old or less has led to another blunder in estimating that Mohenjo-Dara, which existed 5,000 years ago, is pre-Vedic. We have already presented much evidence in the similarities between the Vedic science of city organization and what is found at Mohenjo-Dara in another chapter. However, the finding of a Shiva plaque, coins or seals with Vedic images, and names of the Vedic gods at Mohenjo-Dara have nullified the theory that it was a Dravidian, pre-Vedic civilization. The city was indeed connected with and part of the Vedic culture.

THE PLOT TO COVER VEDIC ARCHEOLOGY IN INDIA

We have to realize that there was a comprehensive strategy to overlook, cover, and falsify the real history of India. Not only did the invading Muslims try to do this over the centuries, but the British, while in India, also played a heavy hand in this. As pointed out by P. N. Oak in Some Missing Chapters of World History on page 16:

"Major General Alexander Cunningham, a retired army engineer was appointed in 1861 as the first archeological surveyor under the then British administration in India, not because he had any special knowhow or knowledge but because as early as September 15, 1842 when he was a mere Lt. A.D.C. to the Governor General Lord Auckland, Cunningham had suggested in a letter to Col. Sykes (a director of the British East India Company) a scheme for falsifying Indian archeology as an 'undertaking of vast importance to the Indian Government politically and to the British public religiously (so that) the establishment of the Christian religion in India must ultimately succeed.' In pursuance of that political objective Cunningham attributed a very large number of Hindu townships and buildings to Muslim authorship."

Max Mueller also expressed the same sentiment in a letter to the Duke of Argyll, who was then the Secretary of State for India: "India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again and that second conquest should be a conquest by education." Thus, it seems that most high officials in the British administration were intent on using their own field of operation to subvert Hinduism and whatever was left of Vedic culture. Thus, the process of character assassination by the British, in cahoots with the Muslims, was on.

Here in we can see the motivation for perverting the real history of India. This is why the reading public has consistently been cheated for many years of the real glory and advanced nature of India and Vedic culture. Because of this, archeologists, historians, and architects, what to speak of scholars and tourists, have all along presumed the medieval monuments of India are all of Muslim origin. Or that without the Muslim invasions and their so-called artistic and architectural "contributions" India would never have had such wonderful monuments today. This idea that has gone on for the last six to eight centuries has created a monster which many antiquarians find difficult to shake off. We now must unlearn these false notions and histories and begin to associate such things as the dome, lime concrete, and the ornate carvings and art work as indigenous features of Indian architecture.

Prior to the founding of the British rule in India there was no archeological department. Incorrect and false archeological records started during the long alien Muslim rule that preceded the British in India because of the Muslim practice of grabbing and misappropriating Hindu temples and palaces to become mosques and tombs. Thus, when the British came to power in India, many historic buildings were already under occupation and possession of Muslims. When the British first set up an archeological department, not only did they have their own reasons to falsify Indian history, but they also simply consulted the Muslims who occupied the buildings and recorded their bluff. Of course, if the Muslims told the truth about the Hindu origin of the buildings they occupied, they may have very well lost the right to the possession of such buildings. Such deceptions have gone on to become the basis of the archeological department of India.

Because of this, from the very first generation of European-trained Hindus up to the present day, a sizable section of Hindus have been wasting their time and energy discussing and even deploring all their own "faults" as pointed out by their detractors. Thus, they have fallen into playing the very game that their European Christian and Muslim critics have started.

We need to have a correct view of world, and especially Indian, history. In all honesty, it would be correct to say that at this point, Muslims and Christians should be deemed to be disqualified from writing on Hindu history not only because they have a record of hostility to Vedic culture, but also because their outlook on the world and their antiquity of history generally goes back no further than to a Mohammed or Jesus. They are unable to visualize any part of the world having a balanced or advanced society before Islam or Christianity came along to "save" everyone. To them anything that is pre-Christian has to have been heathen, barbaric, godless, or pagan, and traced back to Greece or Rome. Thus, their religious loyalties stunt their intellectual horizons. This is quite evident as viewed in the case when Mr. P. N. Oak wrote to Harvard University to a professor of the civilization of France asking for particular information about pre-Christian France. The single-line reply he received simply stated that they know nothing of pre-Christian France. This shows the appalling state of research that such noted universities as Harvard are content with. Thus, they have no interest in pre-Christian history.

Another example of the lack of real concern for the correct view of Indian history is explained in World Vedic Heritage, page 1127: "In addition to Cunningham's devilish plan delineated in the letter to Col. Sykes, we, luckily, have an unguarded testimony of a fellow Britisher, James Furgusson (see pp. 32-33 and 76-78, Indian Archeology, by J. Furgusson, 1884) that 'During the 14-years he has been employed in the Survey, he (Cunningham) has contributed almost literally nothing to our knowledge of archeology or architectural geography.' Naturally, because Cunningham looked upon archeology merely as a stick to beat the Hindus with.

"Consequently, once when Cunningham's assistant, J. D. Beglar expressed the view that the so-called Kutub Minar (in Delhi) was a Hindu tower, Cunningham haughtily overruled him to assert that it was a Muslim tower. This is on record." And thus, the Kutub Minar, which thousands of Indian and foreign tourists visit each year, is pronounced and recorded as a tower that was originally built by Muslims. Furthermore, Muslim inscriptions on such Indian buildings, mosques or tombs, should not necessarily be mistaken to signify the ORIGINAL builder, but only the captor, occupier, or usurper. Even Muslim chronicles may mention the building of such things as canals, giving themselves the credit, when actually the canals were already there.

It has been through this process that Hindus have been robbed not only of architectural credit, but also of anything else that is good and artistic, including music, poetry, literature, styles of painting, color decoration, gardens, fountains, pottery, porcelain, carvings, etc., even when found in India. Thus, the once global Vedic culture and India have been humiliated and made to appear small and despicable, while Hindus in general have been made to appear puny and insignificant by these same outside forces. Thus, it is time for people to realize the immense contribution that the Vedic culture and the ancient Hindus have given to the world. It is time to understand the real history of India.

[This article and more information at  www.stephen-knapp.com]

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