Sanjeev Sanyal

"The term ‘majoritarianism’ is used in India as a convenient way to demonise Hindus without any reference to first principles."

"Aurobindo’s change of direction may seem inexplicable, but his writings explain his reasons. He seems to have come to the conclusion that he had already accomplished his role as India’s Mazzini by triggering the flame of nationalism. It was now a matter of time before the British were forced to leave. However, he also felt that there was a more important civilizational battle that India would have to fight, which would prove much harder than just gaining political freedom. After centuries under foreign rule, Indians had come to see their own culture from the perspective of those who had conquered them. Many members of the Indian elite had imbibed the idea that sacred texts such as the Vedas and the Upanishads were just superstition—like Aurobindo’s father, they had come to believe modernization meant Westernization. One could argue that this shows incredible foresight, as more than a century later, seven and a half decades after gaining political freedom, this remains a matter of hot debate in contemporary India. He felt that it was his duty to rediscover the true core of Indian civilization and present it to Indians and the wider world. With this in mind, Sri Aurobindo dived deep into the Rig Veda, the most ancient and revered of Hindu texts."

"“Indian history is not what we have been taught to believe” and that people are led to feel that the Indian had “no agency in world history”.“To change the narrative of who Indians were historically, see, one of the things I’ve been trying to do and not just through this project, I’ve been writing these history books, is to show that Indian history is not what we have been taught to believe”, he said. “That it’s not the case that Indians were somehow a passive people sitting in India waiting for conquerors to come and give us civilisation and that we have no agency. This is not a history at all”, Sanyal added. “A very little bit of digging into our own history will show us that this is not our history. We have a history. We’ve got a rambunctious history of adventurers and mercenaries and doing all kinds of interesting things”, he said. “One of the things we did was very early on, long before even the Phoenicians, who are famous mariners of history, we were sailing during Harappan times to the Middle East. The seals were found in Mesopotamia”, he said. “We had a port at Lothal and Dholavira and all of these places. But even later, it continues. And that’s why they were sailing out to Indonesia. They were sailing all the way through to Korea”, he said. “In fact, Korean history actually begins with the marriage of a local prince to a princess from Ayodhya”. He added that the legacy of such connections endures to this generation. “The Macaulay mindset is not really about Macaulay the person. What it really is about is this psychological idea that we have imbibed into our nervous system, almost, that we are somehow functioning because civilisation was given to us by other people and that we have never had agency”, he said. “So, okay, the Mughals came and built the Taj Mahal. That’s fine. You know, the British can come and do something, but we should not do anything. So now this is imbued into us in a very fundamental way”, Sanyal said. He added that this attitude continues to shape public discourse even today. “It showed through, for example, when we wanted to build a new Parliament”, he said, underlining how deeply rooted the mindset remains in contemporary thinking."

"If Sher Shah had lived longer, it is possible that we would not remember the Mughal rule as anything more than one more Central Asian raid."

"The Ganga’s southward drift was arrested only when it nudged into the Vindhyas near Chunar. It is the only place in the plains where a hill commands such a view over the river, making Chunar fort a coveted strategic location"

"Not many people realize that India is host to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. It is believed that the earliest Jews came to India to trade in the time of King Solomon but, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, many refugees settled in Kerala. St. Thomas the Apostle is said to have landed in Muzaris at around this time and lived amongst the community."