The STORY:
Talk to an average “educated” Indian, and tell him that “A Sadhu from Varanasi told me that our Yoga cures Schizophrenia”, and in all likelihood not just that he won’t believe it, but he will even probably laugh at it.
Now tell the same person that, “A recent research at MIT proves that our Yoga cures Schizophrenia”, and he will exclaim, “Wow!” as if he personally witnessed the entire research and will accept it without any further questions.
The MORAL
No nation or society can achieve anything worth without having an accurate knowledge of their history, of their past, of what their ancestors achieved.
Lack of historical knowledge leads to a lack of identity, absence of national pride, misinformation about the past, lack of motivation – all these in turn build up an inferiority complex which results in people aping what is projected to be superior (the western society), which in turn leads to the nation becoming a follower and not a leader.
This is exactly what happened to India ever since the British introduced English education filled with inaccurate representation of history which suited their colonial interests. This English education replaced the traditional Indian education in Sanskrit and other native languages of India which used to teach us about the real history of Indian civilization.
This is also the reason today why most Indians refuse to take at face value when another Indian or an Indian institute talks about great things from ancient India even after showing ample proof, but readily accept the same if it comes from an western institute or a western scientist.
So the need of the hour is to bring back the real history of India in mainstream education, the achievements of our ancestors, the contributions of our civilization to modern science, technology and society – and that will in turn motivate the masses to become leaders again from being the present blind followers of a supposedly superior civilization.
At present what we see in India is mere parroting and mimicking and aping of the west. But that is no creativity or innovation, and so obviously does not bring out the full potential of the Indian nation. “You have it in your genes” can work wonders in aiding out of the box thinking.
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Yes we should have correct version of History in education and Medium of Education should be in our language. No need of English Medium schools, keep English as a separate subject in education. We should not learn our knowledge in foreign language.
You need to read the original books to realize that they are historic documentation. Are you implying that people spent time writing fiction, but never documented history in those days? And yet, in the so called fiction you have real geography mentioned, dates mentioned, events mentioned, which are all in sync with each other, 50-100 lineages mentioned in detail while the main story in Mahabharatha or Ramayana revolved around 2-3 generations at the most. Why would a fiction writer go through all the pain of writing in such a detail if he were not documenting history, which are irrelevant to the main plot.
How many fiction writers sit and calculate the exact dates and timings of events to match the story, and how many other writers (Puranas, Mahabharatha, Ramayana etc) write their work to be in tune with each other which are so apart in time and place, and how many fiction writes CLAIM what they are writing is history and not fiction. If you still think these are fiction, well that is your world, your wisdom.
Disgree….
How come then when they say yug changes everything destroyed but not the books on which they were written……..
Not every yug destroys everything, there are four yugs and at the end of the fourth yug the destruction takes place. This is a cycle of four yugas – Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali.
The books you are talking about all still belong to the present four yuga cycle.
history is itahasa, which is mahabharata and ramayana.. purana were written solely to make ordinary people understand the essence of vedas through symbolism and personification.. there’s a reason why they wrote it even though it’s fiction.. it’s to make vedas easier to understand.. Itihasa literally means ‘it happened like this’.. which means history.. purana are neither trash nor useless but they’re not history.. the biggest proof for that is the stark difference in the way the formation of universe is mentioned in vedas as compared to purana.. in vedas, there’s no mention of Lord vishnu or Lord brahma or Lord shiva.. even though the names are mentioned, contextually they mean something else.. they talk about how atoms got together to form the universe.. but the same process is explained in purana by personifying concepts that are difficult for people to understand.. the same names like vishnu, brahma, rudra etc. were picked from the vedas and given personality and faces in puranas..
The essence of vedas is taught in Upanishads, not in Puranas.
Puranas are itihasa as well. In fact Puranas are a sub set of Itihasa.
Puranas are narrations of individual incidents, events related to person, place or idea. For instance, Sthala Puranas talk historical incidents related to a place.
Unlike modern science, where cosmology comes under physics, in Indian science birth of the universe and its early life cycles are a part of the universal history and hence are narrated in the Puranas.
Heard this from a great man. All the history we read today is either written by “conquering generals” or the “christian priests”. Including the history of India we read from school text books. So you can imagine only imagine what kind of distorted things they have written about our land, as each one of them had their own agenda, that is to make believe all our customs and knowledge was worth less and that the west is superior. Every one knows how Max miller twisted our ancient scriptures. Have an open mind and research it you self, dont rely on the interpretations of the west to know your own culture.
Rightly, the Lion’s version of the story will always be different from that of the hunter.
While I agree with you, I am a little wary of administering that streak of advise universally. What I would suggest is that people like yourselves should also advocate that it is imperative to be able to accept what turns up in our quest of ‘fact finding’. However odd these facts may be, they should not be biased with ‘blind faith’ or pseudo-interpretations of the scriptures.
I am very convinced about most of your interpretations of the facts and completely agree with you about the ‘damage’ that was caused by the ‘western’ interpretation of our great scriptures.
We have to understand what’s written therein, there’s a lot there that’s been lost. Maybe reading other works in areas like ” Aliens & the supernatural”, the ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’ and ‘Dawkin’s ‘The selfish gene’ would be a step taken in the right direction of cultivating an ‘open mind’.
Keep up the great work.
What more to say when “purAna” instead of getting termed as “history” gets christened as “mythology” in the hands of the
British? It is as if, Lord Rama and Krishna never existed and their stories in the purAnAs are a “myth”.
If you try teaching such things in schools, it will be called saffronization of education by the english media as well as the so called secular parties.
In that case, we do want saffronization of education, isnt it :)
I disagree – the reason why the average Indian (today) does not trust Indian institutions is not because we don’t believe in our history but because we do not trust in our present. In a world where Sadhu’s and Baba’s are found involved in all kinds of crimes from sexual harassment to money laundering – there is no point trusting them. If MIT claims that ‘XYZ thing is true’ there is a reson to believe that this was based on genuine research. But when the same is claimed by Indian research institutions it is hard to believe because we all witness the intellectual hollowness of Indian Universities not withstanding the lack of adequate funding to carry out serious research.
The same research finding coming from an IIT or and ISB or IISc would be more credible than it coming from an Utkal University – for the same reason, a finding from the MIT or NYU is more credible than that from an IIT – it is just a matter of credibility you establish through genuine and serious research!
You’ve got it wrong. Let me explain why.
Frauds happen in EVERY country. It is only that in India media highlights only the negatives and in the western society its only the negatives of developing countries and positives of their own society that usually gets highlighted. Take this example.
WHY DOES AMERICA PRETEND IT DOESN’T HATE WOMEN? http://feminspire.com/why-does-america-pretend-it-doesnt-hate-women/
Read it. What gets highlighted is what gets fed in the minds of the masses. Now there are only two mediums which have the greatest influence in the minds of the masses about what gets highlighted – education and media.
Indian education is all about glorification of the western society and achievements, very little is taught in our schools about what our ancestors achieved in the past. This has built up a bad reputation about ourselves in our minds, even without we ourselves realizing it.
Do you mean to say there are no frauds, wrong researches, corruption, crimes, etc in the west?
MIT was just an example I gave. Replace it with any english named university from the west and people will readily accept it without even giving a second thought. The reason is the mindset, what we are constantly brain washed in our schools, that our own brains are nothing, all the science and tech came from the west. And this is very wrong. And let me assure you, as long as this notion is present in our youth, India will never become a leader, if will only be a follower , aping the west.
Forget the sadhus, look at the IT industry. Supposedly an IT super power India. Really? How many world class software products have been innovated in India? What is the kind of jobs people do in our IT companies? Do we call it innovation? There are no sadhus, scandals, corruption in IT right. And yet, what stops us from innovating here? Why are we not leaders here.
Even in IT we are just followers, copy paste code from Google search, just patch up bugs, maintain software, provide software support – absolutely no mainstream software product development work. How many programming languages, operating systems, software platforms, specialized software, etc have come from India? Even here we are (supposedly) good at only following and implementing the standards, tools, platforms, frameworks developed and implemented in the west. Where is our own contribution? The reason – not believed in our selves, we have been trained to ape, not to lead.
I will give you another example. We read newspapers everyday. And there will be a small column somewhere about recent research statistics or discoveries done in some western institution. One day it will say, (albeit hypothetically), “Researchers have discovered that coffee is good for heart”. Oh great, we think. We don’t doubt it even for a moment.
Now after a few weeks, or a few months, or probably even after a year, another similar column would say “Researchers have discovered that coffee is bad for heart”. Oh great, we think, again without any doubt.
I have experienced it myself in the past, and that is how I realized this. Now what is this? Blind belief in anything that comes from the west. Please note that there is no India involved in this example. It is only about our brain washed attitude about the west being the best. This has nothing to do with, in India we having many scams, corruption, fraud etc. For that matter, all these things happen all across the world. It is only that, in India we have too much of population, so more of it, and the other, our media almost always highlights only the negatives. Positives are happening in our country n times more than they are visible in the limelight.
If you see it that way, then there are millions of people following the sadhu type figures in our country today. There have been several fraud cases , but at the same time many others have helped people with their medicines and all.
Basically, what I mean to say is, if we can’t trust western civilizations in terms of new research, then we must also not trust the new stuff the sadhu figures in our country.
Its not a case of trusting or not trusting either side blindly. My message is do not trust western research blindly, nor mistrust ancient Indian science blindly which is exactly what is happening today in most cases. For I see no difference between a cheating sadhu in India and a biased research published in the west by MNCs to promote their products and businesses. While you hear about most of the fake sadhu cases in India, you rarely hear about such fake research reports in the west in India. At the same time while you read about a lot of genuine research from the west in Indian media, you rarely read about genuine research by traditional Indian science experts in India. This is what the entire article is all about.
We know how unsafe women are in India today, now ask any average educated Indian about whether women are unsafe in America, pat comes the reply “No” more than 9 out of 10 times. Now ask the same question to an American woman, and you will know the answer.
http://feminspire.com/why-does-america-pretend-it-doesnt-hate-women/
So its not that, the so called “Indians” know everything, and have decided what is correct and what is not – its all about the information fed to them – via education and media. Indian media mostly highlights only the NEGATIVES of India, most of what comes to us about the west through media is MOSTLY the positives. Now while this is about the current affairs and the media, the same applies to education and the knowledge of our past as well – the good things of west and the negatives of our own society – these are the only things that get highlighted in our schools. I am not talking about exceptions but about rules.
Constant feeding of negatives, creates only negative vibes, a sense of pessimism, dislike towards your own society. Take the case of Israel for instance, which always tries to feed positive news to its people, a couple of years back when there was a major terror attack in their country, the next day newspapers carried not the story of horror and bad news as their main heading, but about an innovation by a local farmer who had innovated a new farming method to get more yield with less land. That is what makes the difference between these societies.
Agree….
How ? Most of the exiting schools in the country are convent and no one is talking about the sort of education that you’ve mentioned here. Pls correct me if I’m wrong and mention a few schools, if u r aware of, who are going by the philosophy that u mentioned here
Exactly, most schools are not teaching what is supposed to be taught. That is the whole point of this article, that our education system needs not just to be changed, but completely revamped. Children today are being trained to parrot the subjects, ape the west, and score more marks. Factual knowledge, creativity, talent, motivation have all become secondary.
true.
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