The Story of India ....

Viewing documentaries has become a favorite obsession of mine recently. I recently watched a great documentary by "BBC" titled "The story of India". This documentary talks about Indian civilization and how once a rich civilization got invaded by different rulers.

This documentary is divided into seven parts, giving invasions from Romans, Muslim, Agfan, British etc. Discusses the notion of a rich India and its importance to west. The silk, spices, fertile land of South, the trades, kings and their dynasties etc. Discusses the cultures as present in Southern India, the temples and their history. Kings like Chandragupt Mourya, Ashoka, Chol dynasty kinds like RajaRaja etc and how different kings had different views in terms of religion, culture, vision, humanity etc. Talks about the impact they had on then people in terms of the way they rules and the different cities of India like Varanasi, Patna, Ayodhya and their religious importance. Talks about philosophy of life and different religions like Hindu, Budhism, Sikhism, Muslim etc and how these religions spread during course of time during different periods of history and the effect it had. In short this is a great documentary which makes ones think on the way things happened in past and the reasons why they happened that way.

While I was watching this documentary, I was carefully analyzing different questions that were occurring to me. Questions like why caste system spread, questions like why India is so poor, why we are so divided in so many different aspects, why their is difference between west and India and why Education is still not a basic right in India. How cultures such as Tamil culture influence religious sentiments and how strong the religious influence could be. Why different cultures prevail in India and how managing India as politically managing all these things is a herculean task. I also happened to read a book by Infosys cofounder Mr. Nandan Nilekani "Imagining India" recently. It talked about the India as it is since it gained Independence and how different transitions in Indian politics happened in due course of time. Watching this documentary made some points even clearer as this documentary stops exactly where Mr. Nilekani starts.

History as I look back at it now, seems a lot fascinating and interesting. Especially with abundance of documentaries made available through file sharing networks like bit torrent. Many observations occur to me like, shouldn't history be retaught to some extent when we are grown up, during our formal years at professional schools? It is largely said that it is during our school years as children that we imbibe lot of values, which we carry as future citizens. We learn many lessons from history but are we really mature enough to understand what is being taught in our schools? We learn civics and lot of social subjects during our schools. But as I recall now, I really did not understand many things that were taught in civics, and feel intrigued by lot of questions. How interesting it would be to have some such experiments like documentaries and other things which are made possible by technology, to be retaught in professional environments. Often when we grow, we tend to get intrigued by many questions, which I feel could be answered if we take a hard look at the history the way it happened and could learn some lessons.
Egypt, Rome, Greek, India, China all had their own say in history. How many of us have really learned about Hindu religion? Or for that matter any religion. I now understand why in the history books some kings were called eminent scholars, because they possessed any immense quest for knowledge and for wisdom. While watching these documentaries I many times end up recalling lot of questions and memories of some passages of history lessons, that I once had, when I was a young kid in school. And I am so much fascinated again, by history that I really want to read all of it, as much as I could. I am sure, I will find lot of answers to lot of my questions, while I re-read / watch it.

Different civilizations, different kings, different rulers, eminent personalities, different religions all had some lessons to give to us, from where we could learn a lot. Lot of our miseries could be solved by learning from them. Point is do we care enough to really understand that many of the questions that we want answers for are right here? We just need to take a hard and wise introspect to find the answers for them. And we will be more wise.

Let the history prevail....