Charles Trevelyan in his testimony before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Government of Indian Territories on 23rd June, 1853: ".....
The effect of training in European learning is to give an entirely new turn to the native mind. The young men educated in this way cease to strive after independence according to the original Native model, and aim at, improving the institutions of the country according to the English model, with the ultimate result of establishing constitutional self-government.
They cease to regard us as enemies and usurpers, and they look upon us as friends and patrons, and powerful beneficent persons, under whose protection the regeneration of their country will gradually be worked out. ....."
Much of the indoctrination of the Indian mind actually took place outside the formal classrooms and through the sale of British literature to the English-educated Indian who developed a voracious appetite for the British novel and British writings on a host of popular subjects.
In a speech before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1846, Thomas Babington (1800-1859), shortly to become Baron Macaulay, offered a toast: "To the literature of Britain . . . which has exercised an influence wider than that of our commerce and mightier than that of our arms .
However, the British were not content to influence Indian thinking just through books written in the English language.
Realizing the danger of Indians discovering their real heritage through the medium of Sanskrit, Christian missionaries such as William Carey anticipated the need for British educators to learn Sanskrit and transcribe and interpret Sanskrit texts in a manner compatible with colonial aims.
That Carey's aims were thoroughly duplicitous is brought out in this quote cited by Richard Fox Young:
"To gain the ear of those who are thus deceived it is necessary for them to believe that the speaker has a superior knowledge of the subject.
In these circumstances a knowledge of Sanskrit is valuable. As the person thus misled, perhaps a Brahman, deems this a most important part of knowledge, if the advocate of truth be deficient therein, he labors against the hill; presumption is altogether against him."
In this manner, India's awareness of it's history and culture was manipulated in the hands of colonial ideologues.
Domestic and external views of India were shaped by authors whose attitudes towards all things Indian were shaped either by subconscious prejudice or worse by barely concealed racism
ahah....nalla ulagamappa ithu....I have been telling the same thing in different discussions at different point of time . naan sonna ellarum therithi therithi adichanga....nallathukku kalame illa....
To revisit what I have been stating earlier - 1. Britishers wanted to divide and rule..SIMPLE...created the caste barrier - brahmin non-brahmin 2.Studied sanskrit and translated vedas to suit their needs. Result - non-brhamins started hating brahmins. 3. Inculcated western lifestyle, both in language and lifestyle - to uproot the local tradition and culture.
and a lot more...not the exact words but meaning close to these. Paramartha guru kadaigal was written by 'veerama munivar'. He was a christian missionary and wanted to bring down the respect Hindus have on sanyasis..so he ridiculed hindu sanyasi as far as possible. Probably today, we are immune to it. But think about 200 years back. what an impact it would have had on the hindu community.
Britishers were great, because, what they sowed 200-300 years back, we are still reaping.
cmon, for godsake... they were invaders... what do you expect them to do? subsidize the food and patronize the poets? of course they manipulated indians...
Dear Bala and Satish It is always easy to blame someone outside for all our ills and ilks. I dont deny that english used our literature and epics to their advantage but not without a reason....It was only possible to change those because of the political and social status of the country then....
Come on Satish next thing you ll claim is the British invented Varnadharma...
Unfortunately we have been invaded for years and have payed the price....Persians left their impact in Gujarat...The Arabs and afghans almost made sanskrit dissapear with the advent of Hindi... portugauese and french did their bits... I totally agree that the Xian missionaries used it to their advantage by learning our texts and changing them.....
But English by then became the Lingua Franca of the world.....First it was Latin then French then german and now English..
Unfortunately the English are the ones at a dissadvantage with Anglising the rest and not learning any othrer language...
The Spanish learn Englishthe greeks do the germans do so you can survive and cope with english any where in the civilised world unfortuntely for the brits they cant do the same anyhere else cause they cant speak any other lingo...
the persentage of indians who could read english is the 1700s will be miniscule but that was the elite...the rajahs and dhiwans and zaminders but for the rest.....did they really matter theirs was just to do and toil..... yet we will happilily blame it on the british...
we cant agree on a common national language after nearly half a century of freedom and rightfully so because why should I learn Hindi??
But we are ruling the IT and Medical world and chatting like this on the www only due to English.....
I remember a time when once you crossed Krishna you are practically mute without Hindi....One me and my friend were asked in Delhi... Aap Hindi Nahi jaanthe? Aap bharat me kya karenge...? (You dont know hindi what are you doing in India) But no body has asked me that outside Indian territories except the Indian High Commision in UK who still believe all they need to know was Hindi to work there.
Do you think the french and english could have got a foothold in India but for our internal sqaubbles or the moghuls etc
nanum athaye than sollaren. Its easy to blame others for what ever happened. But we Indians fail to admit that most of the damages done to Indians are due to muslim and european invasions. Rather we simply blame the Hindu religion, the vedas, the varna dharma, and not to forget the so called high caste brahmins.
I never said varnadharma was invented by britishers. But again we fail to realise the background of varnadharma, why it was in place, whats the ideology behind it etc and simply blame that the brahmins brought varnadharma for their benefit. varnadharma was basically a economic policy of the socity to grow together. Even in western countries, people have sur names as Cobler, butcher, carpenter etc. Nothing but their kula thozil..same kula thozhil in India is varnadharma..The anti-vedic or rather anti-brahminic forces have coloured it differently.
I am not against english or any other language, but most of us Indians are against Sanskrit, why? because it has been branded as a brahmin language.
Mr.S.Ramachandran of www.varalaru.com, an eminent epigraphist in State Archelogy dept. put forth a wonderful point. He said, we have lost a great deal by neglecting Sanskrit. Sanskrit is perceived to be a brahmin languge, but it is not. It was the court or rather official language in those days as we have English as official language today, and tamil was the common language. Where comes the distinction in languages? Kalidasa who is the greatest poet in sanskrit is not a brahmin.
Golden words to be understood by each and every indian. He also added, tirukural has everything in the world. Its equivalent to veda. And 'valluvan' is a SC/ST community as of today. Do you think, tiruvalluvar sat on the four banks of Mylapore tank and wrote the tirukurkal? Is it possible to write such a great poem as tirukural, if he was deprived of his social status and illtreated as a low caste person? Impossible. He should have been well versed in sanskrit, the social practices and all the worldly things to come out with such a masterpiece. If there had been a caste discrimination during his period, he would not have written "kulathalave thondrumam gunam", because he belongs to a sc community. so the concept of kulam in those days was totally different.
I was spell bound when I heard it from him and I think he is not a brahmin.
> So lets face history as it is
Again i too am saying the same thing. Lets not have a tinted glass. Lets face history as it is. If we are really interested in history, we should find out when this social discrimination was brought in and try to understand the actual principles of our land. do we have the guts to talk about the attrocities committed by muslims? You yourself have condemned me for writing those openly, saying that it will offend the muslims and christians who are in this group. But you have written a lot about the attrocities committed by brahmins. Did you ever think that it will hurt the brahmins in this group?
I like to see both sides of the coin. But majority of us have a pre conceived notions.
if the cholas conquer kadaram we are proud if maamallan burnt vatapi to ashes we are delighted
if lanka was conquered by the tamils we are delighted
we rate all these achievements as the bravery of our kings
but when the british conquered india why do we deem it a wrong thing.
we have to be honest in that also.
if you take the warfield also pushing aside all passions,the british were certainly well equipped than our kings and deserved to win.
when we blame our caste system on the britisher's divide and rule policy, do we thank his educational system for our success in BPO, software and scientific advancements .
people would immidietly say the british offered education in lieu of conversion.
but no other imperialist nation did so much for its colony. the incas and the aztecs were wiped out. the africans reduced to slaves. the british did not try the indian experiment in other colonies either.
curse me all but if you ask me sathish ' the best thing that happened to india was the british rule"
Well said Venkat. Thats really a valid point. we cant debate whether british rule was good or bad to India because it had been proved to be good. The worlds largets railways could not have been possible without them. converting mg to bg- namma makkal for decades they are struggling. Thinking about a network 100 years back...its wonderful.
My point is, lets be open to everything. Lets see good and bad in all...why should the vedas and brahmins ALONE be blamed for everything happening in this country? :)
Sri, My intention is simple, lets practice before we preach. When we say we need to have an open view towards history, we should really be OPEN..we all are prejudiced. as long as we dont see ourselves as one and appreciate the past culture and tradition, as long as there is a hatred in everyones heart against others for whatever reasons, TRUE history can never come out. When the whole world appreciates THE oldest religion in the world, we try to sideline it and this is the major bottleneck to bring out TRUE history, because, Indian history is nothing by Hindu history.
> This is very very true. We dont take pride in our culture and try to denigrate it as much as possible. We have been fed with lot of doctored stuff regarding our history and even when the these theories are being shatered by fresh evidences, our pseudo intellectuals refuse to accept the truth. Anyhting against their thinking will be branded as regressive and communal. So even the balance minded people dare not speak against them.
this is a world wide phenomenon
look at the da vinci code. for generations people were talking about " the dynasty of jesus" now somebody comes up with a full theory. popes were always portrayed as demi saints. now there is a lot of evidence that many of them had concubies and had lusty orgies in the main palace itself( especially the borgia family) there are popes who were succeeded by their sons. every religion has doctored stuff. "religion is the opium of the masses"- marx( I guess so)
doctored stuff in history is common. but it could be two ways .
what if someone comes out with evidence that raja raja and rajendra were not so benovolent but tyrants in the arweas that they conquered. would we accept it or dare to discuss it.
would we accept pulikesi as an art loving benevolent king? his people say so we have been however fed with doctored info by kalki that he was solely a tryarant.
I guess we shuld look at the acts of the kings/ rulers in the back ground of their times.
There are two reasons as to why we dont accept pulikesi as a benevolent king, the very same reasons that makes people from upcountry to think of rajendra or rajaraja as a treasure hunter.
1. Territories and kingdoms are conquered militarily and after the conquest, the riches and the people of the kingdom are forcibily removed.
In SS, vatapi is demolished and completely vandalised, will people from vatapi think of Mamallan as a benevolent king? If you were in Bengal and due to RJC attack, you have lost the family, treasures and riches of the country
2. Victors always rewrite history - so if a victory pillar(jayastumba) is put by one person the new victor will remove it and put another one in place. We may claim the cholas as our beloved heroes of tamilnadu, but they were the villains for others in and around tamilnadu.
One person's food can be poison for somebody else. If you want to praise someone, then we have to demean someone for the same. :(:) What is good for one person's point of view is bad from the other person's point of view? Maybe historians can vouch for the fact that pulikesi could have encouraged the development of Ajantha and ellora.. I cannot comment on it. If so he did encourage artisans and arts.
if You get a chance of Living in a time of instability, wars, unknowns and a whole lot of beliefs, including king is a god(cos he can make a difference between life and death for the commoner) and a system of ruthless justice and injustice will really put your value systems, beliefs to the ultimate test.
Instead of saying one person is bad and other is good, we should simply remove the attributisation of people, and accept facts as facts, events as events and simply stop attributing the quality unless there is a real need to praise a person or king for his efforts. Rajaraja deserves praise, rajendra deserves praise(maybe not for the gangai padaiedupu), pulikesi would infact deserve praise, for being able to command and conquer so many kingdoms.
Remember people who fight for a cause(dedicated) are always fighting to the last drop of blood than the people who fight for money(mercenaries).
its like egyptians telling the true history of egypt is only Ancient egyptans or Red Indians saying the true history of America is just them???
Indian history is Vedas Is Indus Valley Civilisation is Guptas is Sagas Is the Sangam period moovendhars is Harsha vardhana is Pulikesi is Pallavas is Ghazni and Ghori is Cholas is Panyas is Kalaingas is Mughals is marathas is Rajputs is Sikhs is Portuguese is dutch is french is english is peshwas is tipu sultan is kattabhoma is mangal pandey is tantia tope is ram mohan roy is ghokale is khan abdul ghaffar khan is annie besent is mount batten is ghandhi is nehru is netaji and all
We cannot say Hindu history is Indian history ...Ancient sanathana dharma gave way to bhuddism and jainism and they ae major religions in the world
What I dont agree with is saying Indian history is Just Mughal and British history