There are several explanations why Indian history is crucial
There are many important reasons to learn about Indian history from the past. It talks about how, when, and where India’s oldest societies began, as well as how people began farming and keeping animals, which made life more stable and established. It shows how the native Indians of long ago found, used, and improved ways to live. We learn about how the first people started farming, spinning, weaving, making metals, and other jobs. They also learned how to clear land for villages, cities, and eventually huge countries.
It also helps us understand how they organized for food, shelter, and transportation. People must be able to write in order to be considered educated. Most of the writing styles used in India today come from forms that were used in the past. The languages we use today have roots in the past and have changed over time.
Different but One
Ancient Indian history is very interesting because it shows how many different races and groups lived together in India. India has been home to Pre-Aryans, Indo-Aryans, Greeks, Scythians, Hunas, Turks, and other groups. India’s culture, art and architecture, language, and literature were all affected by its many ethnic groups in different ways. Now, it is possible to tell all of these groups apart from each other by their unique cultural traits.
A fascinating thing about old Indian culture is how it mixed elements of the north and south, as well as the east and west. People in the south compare the pre-Aryan parts to the Dravidian and Tamil cultures, while people in the north compare the Aryan parts to the Vedic and Puranic cultures. The Vedic texts, which were written between 1500 BC and 500 BC, do, however, include some Munda, Dravidian, and other non-Sanskritic words and phrases.
They stand for ideas, groups, things, and places that are connected to peninsular and non-Vedic India. This is similar to how many Pali and Sanskrit names for ideas and groups that started in the Gangetic plains can be found in the oldest Tamil manuscripts, which are called the Sangam literature and are thought to have been written between 300 BC and 600 AD.
Which we may apply history in modern times
Learning about India’s past is very important when we think about the problems we are facing now. A lot of people are inspired by what they think is India’s former glory, and some want to bring back the culture and civilization of the past.
This is not the same as caring about preserving old art and buildings. They really want the old social and culture rules to come back. It’s important to have a clear picture of the past in order to do this. There is no doubt that the old Indians made great progress in many areas, but their achievements cannot be compared to what technology and science have done in modern times.
We can’t deny that ancient Indian society was full of terrible social injustice. The poorer groups, especially the Shudras and untouchables, had health problems that are hard to understand today. It is also against the law and custom to treat women less fairly than men. All of these wrongs would happen again and be made worse if people went back to their old ways of life.
People in the past were able to deal with problems caused by both natural and human factors. This gives us hope and faith in the future, but trying to bring back the past will only make the social injustice that plagued India worse. Because of all of this, it is very important that we understand what the past means.
Colonialist Ideas and How They Affect Things
To meet the needs of the British colonial government, new research into India’s history didn’t begin until the second half of the 18th century. This was despite the fact that educated Indians still kept their knowledge alive through handwritten epics, Puranas, and semi-biographical works.
When the East India Company took over Bengal and Bihar in 1765, it was hard to follow the Hindu rules about property. The well-known Manu Smriti, or “book of laws,” was turned into English as A Code of Gentoo Laws in 1776 because of this. British courts worked with pandits to run Hindu civil law and then Muslim civil law after that.
The Asiatic League of Bengal was created in Calcutta in 1784. It was the last major effort to study old laws and customs, which had been going on for most of the 18th century.
The Nationalist Plan and What It Did
All of this naturally caused a lot of trouble for Indian thinkers, especially those who had gone to school in the West. They were upset by how colonialists changed their history. At the same time, they were troubled by the difference between India’s feudal society and Britain’s growing capitalist society.
A group of academics wanted to make India a better place to live and to change the history of the country’s original inhabitants in order to support social improvements and, more importantly, self-government. There were some scholars who were fair and logical, but most of them were swayed by the nationalist ideas of Hindu revivalism.
In this group is Rajendra Lal Mitra (1822–91), who wrote a book called Indo-Aryans and spread some Vedic works. He wrote an argumentative paper to show that people in the past ate beef. He had a lot of respect for old traditions and thought that they made sense. Some people tried to show that the social stratification was very similar to the class system based on the division of labor that existed in ancient European communities, even though it was different.
Leaving behind Political History
A.L. Basham, a British historian who studied Sanskrit and lived from 1914 to 1986, wondered if looking at old India from a modern point of view was right. His past writings show that he is very interested in the materialist beliefs of some radical groups.
He eventually came to think that reading about the past was fun and interesting. The Wonder That Was India, which came out in 1951, looks at many aspects of ancient Indian culture and civilization without the bias that comes through in the work of V.A. Smith and many other British writers.
In Basham’s book, there is a big change from social to semi-historical. A similar change can be seen in D.D. Kosambi’s (1907–1966) book An Approach to That Same Analysis of Indian History (1957), which became well-known in The Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline (1965). He made a new way in Indian history. His view comes from Karl Marx’s works, which give a realistic view of history.
His argument is that the history of old Indian society, economics, and culture is linked to the development of the elements and production links.
In his survey book, he first showed how tribe and class dynamics changed over time to show the stages of social and economic development. Many scholars, especially Basham, didn’t like what he wrote, but his book is still read by many people today.
Method of Community
Some writers from India and around the world have been researching old India in a hostile and illogical way since 1980. They have Hinduism to do with it. Under British rule, colonist writers purposely downplayed India’s achievements and said that many important parts of Indian culture were influenced by other cultures. Indian scholars talked a lot about what India’s culture has given to the world.
So, nationalism and imperialism continued to clash in how history was understood. Things have changed since then. Equal rights for everyone and irrationalism are on one side, and professionalism and logic are on the other.
People who thought the Polished Grey Ceramic came from the Vedic culture and looked for it outside of India now see the Indo-Aryans as native Indians. They say that Muslims and Christians who are not from there are strangers. Generalizations like these need to be read clearly from the sources and looked at objectively.
In old Sanskrit writings and other sources, neither Hinduism nor the Hindu view of the world are talked about in terms of religion. Hinduism and Hindutva are topics that writers from different groups often write about. In this case, historians who use objective medical methods need to be careful and follow common sense and accepted historical rules.
