The problems of Indians are many fold when it comes to the past:
1. We have learned our history through the eyes of European Christian Missionaries, who had their own agenda. Granted some of them helped us rediscover some of our literature and history. It is not that they were exactly lost.
2. The Dravidian Exceptionalism, was against championed and advocated by some of the mischief mongers of Europe again seeped in their racist and religious beliefs. This created an artificial or false 'pride' that all Dravidian political parties exploited for their own political gains.
3. The Dravidian parties, then like the Communist parties across the globe set their own agenda and propaganda drumming up more on the false prestige based on outdated theories. The problem with the false pride was that when tamilians took pride legitimately on they were falsely accused of being anti-national or anti-Indian or anti-Hindu.
4. Humans exist in different levels, and carry multiple identities. This artificial pumping forced us to not happily exist with the identity of a Indian and a Tamilian at the same time. A telugu, a bengali, a maratha, a Sikh, a kashmiri, a bihari are proud of what they are - their history without any worry of ruffling feathers. Every time a tamilian takes a pride, a tamilian is wondering "is he trying to secede from India". I know I am generalizing and exaggerating - but that is to make a point :-)))))))))
5. Sorry to say, some of our modern founding fathers, including the people who wrote our constitution earnestly strove to cut as many links with our past as possible. Nehru was a prominent figure.
6. As a country we were not economically sound *enough* to spend money on rt dwell on history much. I think Tollywood and Kollywood fared little better than Bollywood, we had several movies based on ancient & medieval Kingdoms/situations.
7. Contrast this with Hollywood, it celebrates American Exceptionalism. Countless movies are made depicting how good and great Americans were in WWI and WWII. How America addressed its historical mistakes - with native americans, blacks, women etc etc. We have no good look at our past through movies - which has a powerful mass reception.
8. And our history books are tainted and continuously toyed by the politicians from all spectrum. It is a joke. Most of the history I know was learned outside my history class.
So we are a nation, a country, a set of people who have been robbed of our past :-)))))))))))))))); and supplanted with propaganda.
So what we need is good solid true history through dramas, movies, books. No bravdo. No propaganda.
People ought to know "Kal thondri mann thondraa kaalathe mun thondri mootha kudi thamizh kudi" should not be taken literally. Unless one has evidence to counter the Out of Africa theory of humans.