[INDOLOGY] New Book

[Nagaraj Paturi]

The intro to the book begins with the sentence:

"Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru helped create the myth of a nonviolent
ancient India while building a modern independence movement on the
principle of nonviolence (*ahimsa*)."

Even if the statement that these two leaders created the myth of
non-violent ancient India can be substantiated through proper documented of
where and how they created this myth, I can say with certainty that ancient
India was never imagined during or later to the independence movement,
either by the educated Indians or by the common public as an India without
wars or without harsh punishments or without harsh ways of crime control
etc. Wars etc. of ancient India were common place from the lowest level
history text books, or the most common sense /layman's /non-professional
books on history to the most professional university level books on
history. Nationalist historiographers glorified the valour of the ancient
Indian kings in their history writings. The legends about sahivaji contain
descriptions of Jijiabai teaching young Shivaji , the stories of Ramayana
and Mahabharata as stories of valour (whereas Anandavardhana looks at the
angirasa of these books as S'aanta Rasa and some other authors of poetics,
plays or poetry view Ramayana as a book of Karuna Rasa, my teacher views
both these books as books of Dharma veera). Even the most ardent followers
of Gandhi compared him to Buddha ,  Buddha now newly known as an epitome of
non-violence through the modern history works unlike in the pre-modern
Indian literature where he was either an avatar of Vishnu or a vaada
poorvapakshin for the Vaidika schools of philosophy. The comparison of
Gandhi selectively to Buddha was required only because the remaining
picture of ancient India was dominated by the incidence of wars etc.

I have to read Sri Upinder Singh's book to be able to say if the book is
really an attempt to demolish a non-existent impression of India in the
general Indian people.



On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 6:59 PM, Olivelle, J P via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> With apologies for cross-posting, I want to announce a wonderful new book
> by Upinder Singh: Political Violence in Ancient India. It demolishes the
> common stereotypes about non-violence etc. Published by Harvard.
>
> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975279
>
> Patrick Olivelle
>
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-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.


BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS, Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Veliyanad, Kerala

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )


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