New Delhi: Various “facts” and “quotes” about India, including those that have gained currency through chain emails, Facebook updates and forwards circulating through the Internet have been scruntinised in a new book. Did India really invent the zero? Was the country the richest in the world before the British came? Did Jagadish Chandra Bose invent the radio before Marconi? Did Takshashila house the oldest university in the world?
Sidin Vadukut’s book, “The Sceptical Patriot: Exploring the truths behind the zero and other Indian myths,” zones into seven of the most popular, oft-repeated “India facts” and attempts to find out how many among them are actually true.
The author says, “Finding a long list of myths or ‘India facts’ themselves was very easy. The harder part was finding those that could be researched well, turned into engaging chapters and then given some notion of closure. I started off with at least twice as many myths before settling on the ones in the book.?”
Vadukut says that for the initial twelve months of writing the book published by Rupa he spent very little time writing. “I spent most of the time researching various chapters, creating lists of various ‘India facts’ ad figuring out how frequently each of them appeared in blog posts, newspaper articles, Facebook updates and general conversations,” he says.
Each chapter concludes with a score card where the ‘fact’ in question is measured in a scale of one to 10. For example, the popular fact that “India has never invaded another country in 10,000 years” gets a measly two out of 10, effectively demolishing the myth.
The proliferation of such myths, Vadukut says, is an outcome of “inadequate history education in schools, an utter lack of engaging historical program on TV, very little popular historical writing, and a general lack of access to experts and scholars. All play a role.”
Sidin, who has been living in UK for few years now hopes to see a historical discourse in India as “vibrant” as in UK. “I am astonished at how much ‘history’ there is all around me. The bookstores are crammed with titles on large and small topics. There are several magazines devoted to the topic, excellent TV documentaries and so on. The historical discourse is just unbelievably vibrant. This is what I would like to see in India too,” he said in an email interview.
The author believes that a lack of self-esteem is one of the fundamental reasons behind myth-pedalling. “History, proud or glorious or horrible, can do little to fight corruption, feed the hungry or protect women. But it provides a little shelter for the tired spirit. I think many of us keep tom-tomming India’s historical and civilizational greatness not because we want others to respect, but because we want to feel good about ourselves,” says Vadukut.
The book has a dedicated chapter on “Quotes about India” where popular quotes on India attributed to famous individuals like Albert Einstein and Thomas Macaulay are taken a closer look at.
Vadukut writes about coming across the hackneyed quote, “Be the change you want to see”, attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, on display at an airport in India.
The author writes, “Unfortunately, Gandhi actually never uttered those words.”
The author exhorts the readers to approach history with a sceptical bent of mind. “When each generation approaches received wisdom with scepticism, perhaps it will reassess established notions of right and wrong…together they — history and scepticism — form a potent force for enquiry.” (PTI)
