In the first session of the last day of TNIE’s ThinkEdu Conclave 2021, the panelists mutually agreed that learning and embracing the past is the key to a glorious future. Amish Tripathi, Author and Director of Nehru Centre and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Author and Professor of Writing, University of Houston were in conversation with Author and Senior Journalist Kaveree Bamzai.
The panelists opined that the British and the other invaders have rewritten India’s glorious past, portraying themselves as heroes, while defacing Indian rulers, kings, legends and gods. Amish said that modern-day Indian historians too contributed to the ‘nonsensical’ trend. “There is a problem in the way in which our history is written, which is why we need authors like Chitra. Our modern history was written by colonial rulers and our modern historians continued with the same approach.
Even relatively recent history defames Nawab Wajid Ali Shah and Duleep Singh. Very regrettably, our historians have carried on this nonsensical approach,” said the author of the Shiva Trilogy and Ram Chandra Series. He added that our History books have wrongly portrayed that India was never a nation before the British Raj. “It is utter nonsense. The Vishwapuran has a lovely line describing our concept of nation. It is at least 2000 years old,” he added. Chitra spoke about characters who have been pushed aside. Case in point, the protagonist of her new book, The Last Queen,“Rani Jindan was defamed by the British with a huge smear campaign against her.”