October 02, 2007

bridge

Today in India the word ' bridge' only means 'sethusamudram' and as every colloquial name in India , you have a British one too. For this it is Adam's Bridge. This has fired up everyone's imagination. People are digging into history books to see if Ram existed. What do you do if it is NOT recorded in the language spoken by the most no. of people on this planet - English in India( a recent recorded survey says this) Do you just say "It is Grandma's Tales" (courtesy Barkha dutt of NDTV)
Our historains are a special lot. I think they just endorse what history was unearthed by our foreign rulers. To be fair to them they have brought in many a monument under the heritage list. But is that enough ? How do you explain history in thousands of years to our young generation. Why are we being short- sighted to the past ?
We are unlike America which has a very short history after blotting out that of the native Indians. But why are we hiding ours ? There are enough ancient texts which would surely bring a cohesiveness to the past.
But then we feel that we should not let that past see the light of today because it concerns one sect of people.
This is the sad phase of secularism.