First-time Ever Greatest History of Ever-greatest Nation EVER, SHARE MAXIMUM!!

If you don’t know by now, the history of the greatest ever nation to exist under the sun god that you have been learning all along at schools and colleges is not exactly true. This is a humble attempt to fix that anomaly and create a new history of our glorious land out of thin air god. And, this is the first-ever attempt because this is the season for first-ever this and that. At this point of time, however, I can only provide you with a first-ever abstract with random contents, because I’m expected to sit and make profound observations about everything under the sun god.

Like, for example, if you lie down on your left side, you’ll fart. This is mentioned in our ancient texts. It, without doubt, proves that our ancestors were in possession of deep knowledge regarding flatulence, which modern science has not yet fully digested. Anyway, I’ve found some time, in between making such profound observations, to write this abstract. Use this as a guide to important events in the history of this land.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that any time you undertake such huge responsibilities, you’re supposed to follow certain regulations and guidelines. Some of them are prescribed by the government of the day, while some others are set by religious organizations. These are simple but strict rules and if you err, you may be charged with sedition or even end up losing an organ or two. So, I’ll strictly abide by those guidelines and in order for you, the reader (as well as the government and religious kernels), to easily identify those areas where I’m following regulations, the sentences will be in bold italics as in the portions in the above paragraph.

Ancient Land

Let’s start at the beginning. In the beginning there was nothing. God just sat there for gazillion years in the dark, doing nothing. And then, out of the black (well, it was dark, so, you can’t use “out of the blue”) 6020 years ago on a chilly October 23^rd (age of earth from bible) he had this brainwave of turning on the light and creating planets and stuff. I've used the term brainwave on the assumption that god has a brain – and before you god people go bonkers, let me clarify that I’m just thinking of an anatomical structure like the human brain and not his/her/its “infinite wisdom”.

Anyway, little did that god know that we, here in India, were one up on him and were pre-travelling planets with our vimanas long before that. In fact, 7,092 years ago, on September 12, 5076 BC, much before earth was even a piddling thought in god’s head, Hanuman met Sita in Lanka. How do we know? Institute of Scientific Research on Vedas. That is how we know (Ramayana dates). Even NASA (an organization set up to corroborate ancient Indian wisdom) has confirmed this, which clearly points to the superiority of our ancient science. There is another group of historians who claim that the land bridge to Lanka was built 1.7 million years ago to bring back Sita. These are minor discrepancies, and the vedic historians and scientists are cooperating and doing peer reviews to pull out better explanations from different orifices.

What matters to us here is that we are an ancient land, unlike, say, South America. We were the first-ever ancient land. We were also very rich. Well, we were humming along very nicely over these thousands of years (or millions, whichever), inventing stuff, discovering stuff, and generally evolving into a tolerant super species, with an occasional fratricidal or parricidal war thrown in, when we lost everything in some mysterious way. Everything vanished without a trace into thin air god – our vimanas, our surface-to-air bow-launched nuclear-tipped arrows, our plastic surgery techniques, our bridges made with floating stones, our rooparkana rahasya radars, our MRI scanners, our WhatsApp..everything. Which meant that we had to go back to low-tech stuff.

Maurya Empire

So, let’s jump straight to the Maurya Empire, which was founded by Chandragupta Maurya, whose mentor Chanakya with his stony face, blazing eyes and wagging finger famously said, “Skip this portion and go straight to the Gupta Empire. This Chandragupta is not the golden one”.

Gupta Empire

The Gupta Empire was the golden age of India (learn this by heart). It was the first-ever golden age of India. History texts don’t mention any silver or bronze ages of India, partly because there’s no History Olympics. Moreover, no teacher has ever read history answer sheets fully. All you have to do is bloviate and end the essay with “Thus, the Gupta Empire was the golden age of India”. Around the time the Gupta Empire (The Gupta Empire was the golden age of India (read 10 times)) was kicking ass, Manu wrote Manusmriti, which was the first-ever smriti written by Manu. There is a claim that a guy called Hammurabi wrote a similar smriti much before this. This is patently false since we’re the ancient-est around. Also, what kind of a name is Hammurabi? Would you name your child Hammurabi? A famous journalist once told me that he liked the name Ajatashatru and wondered why people don’t name kids Ajatashatru anymore. Would you name your kid Ajatashatru? Sorry, losing track here. This is not babynames.com.

Back to history. During the Gupta Empire, which, in case you forgot, was the Golden Age of India, Hinduism was able to claw back some of the space it had lost to upstart (startup?) cults popularized by Buddha and Mahavira, especially, Buddhism, which had the support of Emperor Asoka, who got his name from the Asoka Chakra in our flag, or vice versa (use vice versa wherever possible – teachers like it). Hinduism is a very tolerant religion. This could be attested by the fact that around this time the lower castes, especially the untouchables, were making great progress. They didn’t have to do anything. They didn’t have to go to schools and learn difficult trigonometric equations or astrophysics formulae, and they had 100% reservation in easy jobs like cleaning streets and poop. This continued for 1,000s of years to the chagrin of the upper castes who had 100% reservation in all the tough jobs, though they tolerated it. The tolerance levels reached great heights in the Malabar Coast where the lower castes tolerantly kept distance, some up to 96 feet, from the upper castes lest their shadows hurt the upper caste people. It is also worth mentioning that the lower castes contributed to nation-building by paying taxes even for their boobs.

In between, we failed to mention, there was Indus Valley Civilization, which was a super-duper ancient civilization, though we have our doubts regarding its ancientness. The two main sites of this civilization, Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, are now in Pakistan, which is a hellhole.

This history thing is getting tiresome. Only some key points from now on. Pump in your own gas.

Islamic invasion of India

Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent mainly took place from the 12th to the 16th centuries. The previous sentence is a straight lift from Wikipedia. Here, we have to say that Islam is a peaceful religion, and after some peaceful negotiations, which included loss of lives, looting and plundering, the various Muslim dynasties got to rule over much of North India for a few centuries. You people will have to look up Battles of Panipat I, II and III on your own (very important). Also, there was a Shah Jahan Trump, who built a Taj Mahal casino, or something. Maybe I got it wrong.

Vasco da Gama

While these guys were running riot in the north, Vasco da Gama landed up in Calicut and the Malayalis, as was the custom, raised their mundu in traditional welcome and asked him to take a hike (avantey oru gama). He went back, only to return with more firepower and lobbed a few cannon balls over, after which the Malayalis relented and let him in. That was a big mistake, as he went around cutting noses and ears and stringing people up on masts.

Brits and Independence

When other Europeans heard about the Portuguese, they also wanted in on the action and this eventually led to the Brits coming and helping the country to become good at programming computers in English. They also built railroads and ports to help the natives get rid of their unnecessary stuff, which were packed and shipped off to Old Blighty for safekeeping. This was something they altruistically practiced around the world - helping the natives (when not actively exterminating them).

Anyway, somewhere in the late 1940s the Brits packed up and left because of the Indian Army, while some other people and ahimsa wagerah, wagerah played a m-i-n-i-m-a-l role, as per Maj. General Bakshi, a major historian, unlike me. Real independence came much later in 2014, according to the Maj. General. There’s a high likelihood of the period from 2014 being called the actual first-ever golden age of India, though haters will disagree. Some people are already raising doping allegations against the Gupta Empire, and if proved, it may be stripped of the golden tag.

One ridiculous thing that the Brits left behind was cricket - a mindless, meaningless game they invented to kill time in between drinking tea and eating biscuits. Pakistan, a hellhole near us, is No.1 in it now. It is a hell of a place. It is a hell. That's where we stand now.

It's Infectious, My Lord

As an armchair bloviator, I’m going through a period of fictitious existential crisis, i.e. whether to do a ghar wapsi – a reconversion to Hinduism - or to go back to college.

Ghar wapsi appears to be a safe option in the current environment. There are lot of things in favour of that option. Let me elucidate here, as Scat Cat says in Aristocats. The factors in favour of the first option include dodgy videos that could feature you, guy on TV with loud voice, the best police force in the world, lawyers, phone calls that can scare even old seadogs, squares who want their kid to go to cultural universities for education (unlike them), etc.

When you have these many forces arraigned on one side, you want to play it safe and be on that side. Imagine the best police force on earth – the Delhi Police (DP). How do I know? The DP chief (whose term got over a few days ago) himself told that on TV. He said DP is even better than NYPD. He had been to New York and was not impressed by NYPD. Need proof DP is the best? Some months ago, they received a distress call that a group of mallus were secretly eating beef. Within seconds a platoon was at the site kicking some beefy mallu ass. Even NASA has confirmed this. Mallus had to prove their innocence (an ancient DP custom – people are guilty until proven innocent).

Coming to lawyers - the term, in pre-Vedic Sanskrit, means “people who take the law into their own hands”. You wouldn’t want to rub them the wrong way. They make their own rules. And the DP outsources some of their kickass projects to them. 

Then, there are the right-minded people. The biggest factor. Regular people, people who probably were counting condoms back when they were in school, but became squares when their kids started going to school and they came into some money. These are people you definitely don’t want to offend. Many of them only recently found their middle class alter ego, which is quick to pass the death sentence on, or exile to Pakistan, anyone that they are instructed to dislike. They are the nation. The nation doesn’t want to know the minutiae. It wants only bullet points, in bold capital letters.

Many of the members of this nation are nostalgic of the good ol’ days, when their ancestors knew their places in society. When some of their grandparents were taking bath in the temple pond and going in to pray, some other grandparents were hanging around far outside, bare boobs and all (because they didn’t pay their boob tax). Oh, those were the days. Their aim is to return the nation to its former glory, cleansed of alien concepts such as democracy and free speech.

Did Chanakya, with that icy look of his, ever talk about democracy or free speech? No. He talked about powerful, autocratic father figures who make intellectuals and anti-nationals poop in their langots. We finally have reached that stage of development, which countries like Saudi Arabia had reached much earlier. The authoritarian father figure is now there, whose chest size we know. With this new parameter in place, I can only imagine sleazy British tabloid headlines if a woman becomes the premier –“New Indian PM; 36-inch Rack”. Anyway, if at all I go down this path, I think I’ll join the upper-est caste available, y’know, the crème de la crème of castes, whichever that is. I am not interested in being a Mala, or just an Iyengar or a Nampoothiri. I want to know who was at the top of the pile that came out of Brahma’s mouth and I want to join them. There is a small issue. What would I tell my kids, who are registered as having no religion at their school? (They’ve recently started showing interest in Dinkoism).

Now the other option, i.e. to go back to college or not? This is very tempting. It’s always cool to be a student - bunking classes, playing cards, smoking, drinking, counting condoms, singing songs about freedom (Aretha Franklin in the Blues Brothers). Again? You want to do all that again!? Well, those slogans are kinda catchy. Infectious, in fact. Can I? No? I’m too old? OK, then I’ll settle for Scat Cat (Everybody wants to be a cat).