C P Brown: Why History

3. Why History

False History

Ever since English education had been introduced by Macaulay in 1830s, distorted history was being taught in our schools and colleges. This is precisely the time when CPB started the drumbeat that “the Telugu literature was dying out, the flame was glittering in the socket”, echoing Macaulay, who said, " the entire literature of India is not worth that of one shelf of a European library”. This distorted history taught to over 10 generations of Indians, resulted in a psychological bondage and imprinting through pseudo facts using words as weapons. There is a dire need to de-condition our minds and to understand the truth.

Equality, coexistence

Equality and Coexistence are always stressed in our Dharma Sastras, which were continually misinterpreted and misquoted by the British, stressing on caste divisions, misinterpreting mythologies. A proper reestablishment of the varnasrama vyavastha and adhyatmikata is bound to work for our resurgence as a monolithic society, moving away from the competitive, stress-ridden Western mode of Life.

Religious divide

True history shows that at the bottom level there was no Hindu /Muslim division even in the worst of times. It was a deliberate creation of the British. We should be made to feel proud to call ourselves Indians first and Hindus or Muslims or Christians or Buddhists or Sikhs later. At present the situation is that the voice of any one chokes from calling himself a HINDU, while all others flaunt their religious identity form rooftops, and yet call the Hindu a fanatic. This is not a good sign for the Nation as a whole. CPB contributed to sow a Jangam / Brahmin divide, as well as a Brahmin /other castes divide which were non-existent till then.


Colonial mind set

“You can only ignore history, at your own peril” says a London based journalist in “Observer” commenting on the “Closet” Colonial Mind Set that still exists at the highest levels of British Society Today. The British at the highest levels still feel they are the masters of ‘Poor Indians’ and the biographers also behave exactly like those cringing poor pundits. This has to be exposed by showing the famines and human misery the British caused to tell the present day British people what heinous crimes their forefathers caused.


Historical study a must

A serious study of the historical facts about Andhras is called for. Andhras are not an ordinary people to be degraded as CPB does. The Browns and his forefathers were wallowing in mud flats, semi clad inn raw hides, when Titles in Telugu scripts adorned the coins of the early Pallavas ruling from Kanchipuram during 4th - 6th century A.D. Andhra dynastic tradition is strong in Pallava coins of Mahendra Varman-I. In fact the Andhras ruled from Hastinapur (today’s Delhi) for over three centuries before Christ! These are matters of tremendous pride to Andhras! To tell us that we would have lost our literature to white ants if this British had not bought them is an insult to our forefathers and an affront to our love of knowledge.

Prof. S.S. Surya Narayana was the head of the Department of Philosophy in the University of Madras from 1927-1942. His article ‘on objective history’ is of extreme importance in our study of Andhra History. Sastri shows how a national spirit is essential and should not be demolished. Prof. Nilakanta Sastry is quoted to show how ‘partisanships have developed where none existed before; and the British Indian historian of today is much less reliable than those of a century ago.’

SSS says how “we shall be reading consciously or unconsciously a good deal of present into the past interpreting with the present instead of ‘for the present’. Instead of discussing the destructive role of CPB the biographers introduce the communistic ideas, anti-caste feelings, Brahmin Sanskrit Versus janata gramyam etc, which are the present issues and were not existent then. This poison was subtly injected by CPB a century ago. CPB’s Ghost must be enjoying the Tamasha indeed.

Let us remember SSS, “ Cultural profundity cannot be realised except by a mind steeped fully in its own culture and endowed with an appreciation of the future. But the more you are imbued with the present, the greater your tendency to be biased in your interpretation of the past. How then and where will you find the true historian?”

The question is a very serious and profound one and we cannot ignore it as if it relates only to History. History and Culture, Literature and the Writers, are the four pillars of the nation and are inseparable. Any one of them, if destroyed/ twisted out of context cripples the entire nation. My submission is, that skewed views of an arrogant foreigner who had neither the background nor the capability of having even a glimpse of our culture, are being repeated, because they suit the authors who are imbued with their present biases and politics. Let them hold their views by all means, but not inject them into the Past History and paint a distorted picture demeaning ourselves and belittling the glory of the nation and this millions who died so that we here with our culture intact.

Like Miss Mayo the gutter inspectress, CPB sees in Andhra only a moribund society, losing its literature being eaten by white ants, corrupt and scrawling sycophants, a poverty ridden, caste ridden, non cohesive society, with pedantic pundits not caring for education, abounding illiteracy, superstitions, slavery, religious biases, etc. What is criminal on his part is that he perpetuated this image in his Readers printing the letters of despondency written by starving pundits for help as letters for English students to learn Telugu! While the British were making us read their Johnson’s letter to Lord Chesterfield so that we can see their Poet’s Pride as against our Pundit’s Servility.