About

I hope to share my thoughts, views, ideas, and, may I add, facts, as I see - about India, Asia and the world...I'm especially getting intrigued by history and I'm trying to figure out how much importance do we have to accord history... Also, there remains the question - can history really be authentic? Or, does it depend on who writes it? History could be really fascinating, if approached with a sense of wonder and curiosity, which could actually be accompanied by humility... But I'm not sure that's how most people approach history. It seems to me that history is usually approached with an agenda - hidden or overt... Even archaeology, for that matter... I think it would be safe to say that there are a lot of historians and archaeologists who first have this theory about how things should have been, and then they set out to prove their theory. I'm sure, there are also the genuine professionals - who look for missing pieces of information with a genuine quest for knowledge. Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that so much of the ancient history and archaeology in Asia has actually come to light, and has been preserved to some extent, due to the efforts of western (mostly European) archaeologists? Sure, some of them have contributed to twisted notions of history, but it is also true that a lot of knowledge that we have of our own past has also come to light due to the efforts of Europeans...

Asians, and, in particular, Indians, have not done a good job at recording and preserving history. In addition, there seems to have been a great deal of distortion, perhaps even obliteration, of historical knowledge about India, carried out by Indians. Why do I feel so? I hope to elaborate in the days to come...

Do I have my own agenda? Perhaps not....just an annoyance at the lack of objectivity and openness in dealing with history. But, this is not an exclusive fault of Indians - there's plenty of company out there...

Oh, one last thing - I don't plan to write about the past alone - in fact, I get worked up about a lot of things that happen today - so, I'll be sharing my thoughts about news items, as well...