De-falsification of India's history -- Dr. Subramanian Swamy

Before departing to India after a two month teaching stint at Harvard University, the Janata Party President Dr.Subramanian Swamy today addressed the inaugural meeting of the scholars of the newly established Center for Indic Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. The Center in which the University's Professor Balram Singh and Rajiv Malhotra of the Infinity Foundation are it's driving force, has already received an initial grant of US $ 1 million to conduct research on all aspects of India's civilisation.

In his address titled "De-Falsification of India's History" Dr.Swamy said that at present Indian history text books used in universities in India and in US were first written by British imperialist-sponsored foreign historians and their Indian tutees. These books are completely and mischievously distorted, and since Independence these books have been updated by Communist-controlled scholars. Hence a complete re-writing of these text books is necessary for Indians to develop an healthy Indian identity.

Dr.Swamy urged the Center's scholars to consciously be aware, at every stage of research, the difference between propaganda and scholarship. Scholarship, he said, must recognise ambiguity in data and be transparent in sourcing inferences by adequate references.

He gave the example of Megasthenes writing in his Indica that the king in the capital city of 'Palimbothra' was 'Sandrocottas'.

Later British historians identified these names as Patliputra and Chandragupta, and declared Megasthenes to have been at the Mauryan dynasty capital.

But in Indian history there are two Chandraguptas, one of Maurayan and another in the Gupta dynasty, and they were 1200 years apart.

Moreover Sandracottas could be Samudragupta Gupta, the son of Chandragupta.

Further, the Mauryan capital was Rajgriha and not Patliputra.

Recently, he said, in the Supreme Court in the Rama Setu matter, a whole host of bogus translations of the Puranas and Ramayana was off-loaded by the government.

When the translations were challenged by him, the government had no answer. Translation from Sanskrit texts have to be done by spiritually evolved scholars and pandits since every sanskrit word has many meanings.Dr.Swamy said,

Indian historians have consistently refused to consider this ambiguity or go against their Imperialist mentors and foreign benefactors.He recalled that in 1968 he had sent a paper on this subject to the Indian History Congress but the organisers not only would not list his paper for discussion but even refused him entry into the auditorium. Let us not have this fascist approach when we de-falsify history, he urged. Let us challenge the Marxist historians by debating with them and exposing their ignorance and propaganda to the world academia, Dr.Swamy added.

Tamilnadu Janata Party Office 15.8.2008 Press Release

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