Europeans distorted Indian history, says scholar

vadodara: president of indian history and culture society (ihcs) m g s narayanan has said 'division of humanity in terms of race' is a european practice. in his presidential address on 'the euro-centric approach to indian history in colonial and communist writing: the case for re-interpretation' at the joint annual conference of indian archaeology society (ias), indian society of prehistoric and quaternary studies (ispqs) and ihcs, he said 'the division of humanity in terms of race was european practice which gained new importance in 18th and 19th centuries against the background of the colonial enterprise'.naryanan said "europeans were inclined to treat non-europeans as inferior human beings and provide some sort of legitimacy for their military aggression against those people". in conformity with this practice, european scholars tried to read racial overtones in ancient indian texts from vedas onwards. conflict between the aryan and non-aryan races was found reflected in the vedas and even in the ramayana. this prejudice was imported into the study of ancient tamil sangam literature, too. all this was done deliberately, he said. in vedic literature, the earliest books that are the foundation and source of authority for all hindu sacred books, there is not the slightest reference to a distant homeland or a struggle with non-aryans for the possession of the panchnanda region where the hymns were composed. if at all some sections of the vedic people had come from the other side of the himalayas _ this is possible as there were no political boundaries in pre-historic times _ they must have been living in the punjab area for a sufficiently long period to identify that land with their own religion and culture. they belonged to this land, but the european mind could not accept the fact that indians were authors of such exalted sentiments, and a whole theory of conquest was formulated to establish the foreign origin of indian faith and culture, narayanan averred. the european prejudices were deeply embedded in our understanding of indian history and it would take a long time to dispel them. "this lecture is intended to highlight the distortions to enable the new generations of historians to take stock of the situation and proceed to undo the damage", he said. he observed that "so far we have only undertaken a few repairs and alterations to the structure. i am now convinced about the need to dismantle the structure itself and construct a new one in its place". "this is because the defects are not in the case of details but in the basic assumptions with which they started, and the logic with which they proceeded. these assumptions and logic were the outcome of the european intellectual milieu in 18th-19th centuries", narayanan said. the communists have inherited the same legacy. "when distortions are eliminated, the true significance of work of european pioneers will be appreciated. this will also enable us to do justice to our own traditions, and open before us the path of the future", he said. europeans assumed that indian history was just a collection of unrelated events, like a series of migration and conquests, owing their origin to external stimuli. it did not reveal the organic growth of a nation or a civilisation, marking the stages of development or decline. it was as though india was simply a geographical entity, providing an empty stage for odd characters to appear and move about for some time before their mysterious disappearance, he said. in the inaugural function, asi director general kasturi gupta menon said the government was trying to devise a new scheme to fund academic events that mostly run on paltry funding. she also called upon ngos to address the sponsorship issue of such events. archaeologist v n misra was among the experts who attended the function.