Lies with Long Legs: Discoveries, Scholars, Science, Enlightenment - Documentary Narration by Prodosh Aich

Author:Prodosh Aich [Aich, Prodosh]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: epubli
Published: 2017-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

All trails lead to Calcutta

Sir William made his “epochal discovery” in Calcutta. A lot, of course, had been studied and written on the history of India ages before his discovery, among others, by intruders – in Greek, Latin, Arabic and Persian. Yet no body had ever discovered, written or even mentioned anything about the new “breed” called “Indogermans”, “Indoeuropeans” or “Aryans”. Simply because no body had ever seen them. Nor did Sir William. Yet, wondrously, he made his “epochal discovery” – a discovery that inspired many European Christians to tell many oriental histories. Many adventurers and soldiers of fortune of course, followed Sir William. They participated as “justifiers” in the big business of exploiting India, as “producers of ideologies”. Indology. Doesn’t it sound as swell as “Asiatick Society of Bengal”? Doesn’t it?

Why did British occupants narrate a (hi)story from far off Bengal, which was eagerly taken up by many Europeans to embroider and elaborate that tale in many fanciful facets? It was not just a harmless story of a conquest. No. All these stories were designed as the “historical justification” for looting, building strongholds, colonising foreign lands with the purpose of sustained exploitation. And they were presented as an inherent law of evolutionary development of mankind. The conquerors, the deliberate killers, the occupants, the exploiters from Christian Europe were hailed for having brought culture and civilisation into the “colonies”. They were just following the same pattern of those nomads on grazing grounds, the “Aryans” from the central Asiatic steppes, who came in some “pre historic” period and brought civilisation to India. The Christian “ruffians” were just treading on the footprints of the “Aryans”. What could have been wrong with that?

Let those stories around the central Asiatic steppes, nomads on grazing grounds, cows, horses, copper, iron, bronze and steel be true for a while. Won’t the question arise then, why did those who stayed back home not develop a civilisation and culture comparable with the achievements of their relatives in India? To some extent at least? Particularly a script and literature? Are we on a wrong track? Are we missing the real meaning of foreign invasions? Don’t we just become dull staying at home all the time? Don’t we need challenges of conquest and colonisation to make real history? Isn’t it so? Isn’t itI And if not conquest, then at least mass immigration?

This is being suggested as being the normal course of development and wisdom of human culture and civilisation. The implicit message is even subtler: there cannot be progress without foreign conquerors and occupation. Only killers bring civilisation. They fulfil a historical mission for mankind. Is there any scope for sceptical questions in this network of ideological messages? Is there any need, any room, for reflection, for bad conscience, for remorse, for shame on account of robbery, violence, assault, deprivation of rights, genocide? Aren’t we already on the way to eradicate these “pre–historical” terms from contemporary languages? If we could get these terms erased wouldn’t we also forget the gruesome

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