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 23rd (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.
