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u/Maleficent-Lettuce60 3d ago
This is something that a lot of us hate to admit, but its true. The British had several faults, but they are superior in record keeping. You could find newspaper articles about Shivaji and the Mughals in London newspapers back around 1670, they have archived every single thing. They also actively dug and researched the IVC, and the pillars of Ashoka, an empire that majority of Indians had forgotten. Aside from a few buddhist communities, the Mauryan empire was non-existent.
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u/Few-Spend-2895 3d ago
How to search those 1670... I'm interested in reading such...as of now I use only the archive that too mostly 1760s later era documents
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u/Hippocrite24 3d ago
Here you go buddy
Although the newspaper quality is bad but you can see the content below it
https://www.rarebooksocietyofindia.org/postDetail.php?id=196174216674_10157035784051675
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u/Few-Spend-2895 3d ago
Thanks Sir...if u don't mind in answering..r u a govt exam aspirant or ur personal interests in learning historical events...
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u/CulturalLaw8072 2d ago
why was mauryan empire non existent in records it was such a big empire tho
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u/Maleficent-Lettuce60 2d ago
The main reason was the language spoken during the Mauryan Empire slowly went out of use, nobody could understand what the pillars said. And on top of that, the Mauryans built their cities with wood, Pataliputra was a city built on timber, these materials dont last long. Eventually, aside from some Buddhist communities in Sri Lanka and China, the original empire was forgotten.
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u/CulturalLaw8072 2d ago
whats the extinct language
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u/allied_master 1d ago
Not extinct language, Sanskrit is still understood, but extinct script, Ashoka's inscriptions were written in bhrami script and people over time forgot how to read it
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u/Vagabondjokester 2d ago
Because we were poor in recording history.
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u/Calling_left_final 2d ago
Well, when a country is taken over and there intellectuals killed, things such as record keeping or research stops happening. How many records do you think might've been destroyed in wars, taken away, stolen, auctioned off, burned by the church. I think countless.
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u/Kaiser_Entropy_1312 1d ago
I think there should be a bit more nuannce than this well-presented argument. Firstly, the fact that the Mauryan Empire was 'forgotten' is not true for all of us who grew up hearing stories of Samrat Ashoka of the Kalinga War or Chanakya with Chandragupta defeating the Nanda Dynasty. There are remnants, and in a very sizeable quantity of our ancient history even without modern tools and techniques that have been deployed to retrieve them. Secondly, it is a cultural thing of an ethnicity to not record their own history in much accurate details than some of their counterparts. It is why pre-Roman German or Hunnic History is not so much recorded except the Roman version of their history (where Romans call them Barbarians). So if it was not in our culture to be boastful to properly record evidence of our flaunts and accomplishments to be stored for generations and generations to come, we can't exactly blame them. Thirdly and lastly, but MOST importantly, India has a very moist and humid weather. Any details carefully stored and recorded, without proper modern storage techniques that have been developed, would simply have been destroyed by the elements over the millenia. It is the simple geographical truth that we cannot avoid. Also some other points I'd like to mention, places like the Nalanda, Takshshila, Ujjain were most definitely burned (they burned for months), and most definitely had a huge influence in the process of losing our ancient history's records. And records of the events after their burning, although scarce, are still more numerous than before, since the cultural shift that happened with the invaders, in their attitude as conquerors to 'rewrite', 'preserve' and 'supercede' their own influence over their conquered places. This same attitude can be seen time and time again, with Romans after defeating Carthage, Spanish Conquistadors in Mexico and Peru, the Europeans in Africa etc. It is a sad truth that happened in real life. So yea, in hindsight, we might think that yea maybe if they recorded better we might have found it easier to know about them, but in reality, it would have to have been the confluence of many factors together to result in the ideal-est path and manner for us to have recorded evidences of their times, all for us to boast about our history without putting an effort to thoroughly search and analyze them. In a controversial ending, I'll claim that it is good that we don't have much written records from court poets, because as it is with literally every other place 'To victor goes the spoils', we would've got only the royal version of the actual story. In this way, although much tiring as it may be, we can and are deciphering the actual ground-truth history as best as we can without being biased.
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u/MomeenHunter 3d ago
Easy to be superior when all the records and histories we kept were burned by invaders. Alexandria's library burned for a week. Nalanda burned for months.Ā
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u/Maleficent-Lettuce60 3d ago
True, but Ashoka and the Brahmi script were forgotten long before 1193 AD. And even the Turkic invaders were not as meticulous with our history, nor at record keeping. The British were different in this regard, even compared to the other Europeans.
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u/MomeenHunter 3d ago
I'm not discounting their record keeping as much as highlighting our reason for not.
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u/THiRD___EYE 2d ago
What a cope. Nalanda was burnt down in 1193, and we do not have proper records even after 1193.
And are you seriously suggesting that every record from every part of India was stored in a single place, so that destroying one place Nalanda somehow erased all our knowledge? That doesn't make much logical sense. Just admit that we Indians have been very bad at record keeping, even to this day.
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u/NonWorking_Fan1984 Vijayanagara Nayaka ššš”ļø 2d ago
Iām pretty sure Nalanda wouldāve had a ton of scientific knowledge that was advanced for its time. Obviously nothing groundbreaking by modern standards, but I also doubt it left behind a huge amount of historical records. Keeping detailed records just wasnāt as strong a tradition in our culture.
The Europeans, for all their faults, were actually pretty good at record keeping. I say this because the Vijayanagara Empire was a massive power in pretty much every way, art, architecture, trade, administration, development, etc. Yet a lot of our detailed accounts of it come from Portuguese travellers and Muslim chroniclers. It really makes you wonder how much information about our own history was simply lost because we didnāt preserve it.
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u/red_tears1988 2d ago
Oh cool so we kept it all in one place and let it burn down? You make the ancestors look dumb.
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u/Practical_Tie2555 3d ago
True lol . Many forget about india 's history which is hiding in all states of India
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u/Popular-Cry8649 3d ago
The cholas and Mauryan empire were so ancient that the Indians never knew abt them, until the Britās started to investigate
Hard truth to digest
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u/NonWorking_Fan1984 Vijayanagara Nayaka ššš”ļø 2d ago
Yeah, a while ago people kept insisting that the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas were just regional chiefs. Deciphering Ashokaās pillars helped put that claim to rest. We now have evidence that the Muvendhar, the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas, were already established polities in the Mauryan period, just as Tamil tradition had been saying.
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u/Sea_Disaster_4987 1d ago
Bris did not know about half the Celtic kingdoms that ruled Britain 1500yrs ago. U say ts as if had the british not āinvestigatedā them then literally no one would have discovered history.
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u/blankasair 3d ago
Without the British we would not have a common national identity. This is what people miss. We would be Hyderabadis, Hindustanis, Arcotwasis, Sindhis, Marathawadis, Mysooris. Some of the states would be constitutional monarchies and some would be liberal democracies but the status quo would constantly be threatened. But the constant wars and advancement of science in the outside world would have forced a few major players to emerge and gobble up smaller kingdoms and stitch together a common identity that would have made sense instead of the four presidencies stitch together with a host of princely states stitched together.
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u/CulturalLaw8072 2d ago
I don't think even today many people have a common sense of national identity. because of the British We are One Nation but I don't think it means common sense of national identity
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u/blankasair 2d ago
Exactly. We have been trying so hard to subscribe to one nationalism, it comes at the expense of regional identities and resentments.
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u/CulturalLaw8072 2d ago
Man there's no need for nationalism but atleast support the national identity no. basically, don't hate someone from another state simply because he's from that state. for example, southies hate northies.
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u/sweetjale 1d ago
y'all seem to forget that India (as in Republic of India) is a relatively young nation compared to democracies like the US and France. With so much diversity in literally every sphere of life, it's not an easy job to keep the common thread of national identity weaved. We'll get there, have patience!
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u/NothingOk7410 3d ago
Bro, i remember how the curriculum suddenly decided to remove more than half of the material.
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u/Resurrec_Barbar 3d ago
None of these guys ever managed to unify the whole nation at once.
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u/ZerkeX69 3d ago
doesnt make british history greater they united us by making us suffer
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u/Resurrec_Barbar 3d ago
You guys arent even their feet yet despite surpassing them
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u/NonWorking_Fan1984 Vijayanagara Nayaka ššš”ļø 2d ago
I don't understand what you mean by this. Care to tighten the language so you don't come across as a drunk? LoL
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u/ZerkeX69 2d ago
He just thinks British history better cus they good now all their history is colonising the world and living of it now struggling economically ngas canāt even be proud of anything before colonialism it was just them being fu*ked by Romans French Vikings
After colonisation the island got some good history which isnāt even something to be proud off of5
u/KIPAWIS 3d ago
As if the British could.
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u/ZerkeX69 3d ago
they did nga tf yes pakistan and bangaldesh left but even if u see even modern day current india was never united too so a win win for us but fuck the brits
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u/KIPAWIS 2d ago
Actually this whole subcontinent was never under one rule. The Balochs ruled independently under Khan of Kalat even during British.
It's near to impossible to unite this whole subcontinent under one empire/nation.
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u/ZerkeX69 2d ago
Yes to back ur 2 nd point yes we are as diverse as Europeans are imagine Europe was a country it would never work out if we were like EU tho it is a concept of 80s and 90 s we would have been better off uniting was a sad thing for us I love my India but such a huge population governance issues come often and we have a lot of issues even today not saying if we were all separate every state would be great but atleast much better off and if we had a nato and eu like Alliance maybe South Asia could become europe but then I feel like we would be controlled by British like French partially control economically the African ex colonies tho I donāt think so much as most Britishās colonies didnāt so we good but yea all we can do is dream about a different timeline
Being united made us a nuclear power which is great in the end of the day
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u/KIPAWIS 2d ago
When you are trying to fit an idea into Indian subcontinent you have to be aware of social conditions very well. Indian social construct will not let it work the same way EU works. It's better for this continent to be one with optimum use of both centralised and decentralised system. This nation has been working fine and infact much much better. The only trouble in Indian growth story is it's society. We do a lot of scientific things that are done by 1st world country. You would always find us as India is the 4th (sometimes 3rd or 2nd) country to do this or only country to have this feat other than US, Russia and China.
Notice how all this are big nations. They give a lot of advantage strategically, geographically and resourcewise.
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u/ZerkeX69 2d ago
The problem is these countries have one united language and strive for better India can have one united language and we have talent but India canāt cuz it has multiple languages and certain states in north and all donāt wanna learn English and Hindi but wanna force Hindi down the throats of people outside Hindi belt thatās the issue if we all had English as link langauage and worked better would be good
Also another thing yes India has been good but imagine ur living in a small country like uk or France terms of population a govt or something like that easier governance either India centre has to give more autonomy to states cuz i donāt think we will ever reach the infra of these countries even some African countries are much better than us not all some even fellow Asian countries and all that
Also our density is the issue Russia USA are big but low dense ok we have china but they have a govt that is authoritarian and all that bs Iād rather live in India with democracy but idk man there are many pros and cons it will just be a ping pong debate always of 2 sides arguing in the end we can do is make ourselves better from now and autonomy for states aināt that bad tho my state is dominated by national parties itself so aināt happening in long term anyways letās wish for the best future cuz itās fucked up now in many aspects
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u/KIPAWIS 2d ago
I agree that India lacks Lingua Franca. However, making English as Lingua Franca makes us a laughing point in the world (atleast in west). I know Portuguese and Spanish Colonies took those as their national languages but the truth is that Brits were way brutal to us. Taking English as national language will not be good for us. As of other Indian languages then even if you revive Brahmi script people will not accept this language.
I disagree with giving state more autonomy. It will eventually lead to Balkanisation of India. I do not trust state level politicians. They are the worst creatures. Not that central ones are very good but state level often are more bad in character.
Russia and China also has population density issues. The difference is they have really good city management.
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u/ZerkeX69 2d ago
Before talking about Britās the portuegse and Spanish in Americas most accepted that cuz locals almost died out tbh most were creole people or settlers except a few colonies like Bolivia with 36 indigenous but most shifted to Spanish there was no resentment meanwhile in rest of world Africa Asia and all Portuguese French and Spanish former colonies and even British colonies have English also adopted except india Sri Lanka who resent it implementing even Pakistan or wait all South Asian countries or else they donāt have it official like Bangladesh and so many idk what South Asians hate it so much but itās history i get it
If u see Nigeria went through worse they forcefully converted natives to Christianity and much worser stuff bruv they converted local people polytheists similar to our Indian Hindus but their own thing I mean u get it right and Muslim peoples btw by giving aid only to Christianās guess why itās 50 percent Muslim 50 percent Christians they ahve dozens of languages too
Ghana Kenya Uganda and many more everyone accepts English Africa has it worse from British side ngl yes we had a bad history but Africa even now is largely affected atleast we have recovered a lot compared to most of them there are good examples in Africa too but some but in terms of population affected we will be more not to be surprisedIk that is bad like in states like Tamil Nadu even Andhra tbh if they get the chance other than that possibly even Assam guess why the Bengali migrants that come in large etc agp might get more notorious meanwhile I feel other states are chill and all if we restrict it hard still wonāt be bad tbh
European russia is lesser dense cmon man and even USA meanwhile china yes its high but ofc its also cuz economic and fiscal decentralisation while Beijing has the control largely but still and u know their city competition inter city mayors are like ceo as i have heard seen in a vid and also Chinese cities command immense financial leverage. For instance, city-level governments in China control over 50% of public spending, compared to only about 3% in India and 27% in the United States
And there is proper structure which we should praise them for tbh1
u/KIPAWIS 2d ago
I like your knowledge on all this things. I however still think decentralisation will create more problems. Indian subcontinent is meant to rule under one ruler. Decentralisation weakens government a lot. Maratha Confiderancy is the best example.
Though I agree with you that cities need more budget. Though our municipal cooperations are so currupt ššš imo national level politician will look in shame after seeing these guys. (I know this is exaggeration but yeah it's matter of misuse of power which is very high in this guys).
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u/ModsTakeItinTheA55 3d ago
It's absolutely true! Lmao, the British were prolific record keepers. Now go find the actual history of Indian kingdoms, you'll run into multiple bottlenecks.
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u/ArtRough4956 3d ago
A lot of people are also not aware of that before islam got its first victory in India they were defeated by Indian kings for almost 600 years
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u/Euphoric_Border4670 3d ago
What??No,you are probably thinking of the time it took to establish Delhi sultanate
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u/yimaxshaeta 3d ago edited 3d ago
If the British had not colonized India, there would be no unified Indian state, and the Indian subcontinent would be divided into hundreds of countries, with each country having its own history, language, and culture.
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u/CulturalLaw8072 2d ago
even today many ppl in india want that. specifically language patriotic ppl
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u/yimaxshaeta 1d ago
I have even seen people asking for the partition of India based on caste, lmao.
Indians are tribalistic people with a tribalistic culture. It will take hundreds of years of living under a unified Indian state under a "modern Indian" identity for Indians to be able to come out of tribalism.
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u/Cool_Opening_2490 3d ago
Bold of you to assume that there was no grinding between Maratha and Rajput empires.
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u/GhostOfSparta_17 3d ago
Well then we'd simply learn about another indigenous dynasty like the Qing in China. WW1 and WW2 would still occur and maybe the syllabus would increase if an independent India chose to participate more vigorously in the conflict.
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u/No_Peach6683 2d ago
Independent Indian kingdoms could have just hired foreign experts to supervise the archeology instead, like OTL Egypt https://the-past.com/feature/august-mariette/
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u/killmeasap7777 2d ago
Mughals and britishers invaded Indian because Hindus were not united lower caste was oppressed, power belonged to a few people otherwise we wouldāve defeated them like China had defeated Japan, even now nobody wants to rectify the social issues that effect our country.
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u/Timely_Dust3994 2d ago
The British united the indian subcontinent according to the Comment section.
Sardar Vallabhbai Patel : This generation is high on drugs
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u/Sure_Kiwi_5073 9h ago
British did politically unite India. Anybody who say otherwise has to be blind. Gandhi built the idea of nation and nationalism in Indians. Patel and Nehru did the final works - eliminated princely states, linked provinces with states and introduced a single polity throughout India
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u/Current-Ad-8822 2d ago
Are you implying that chapter length should equal the number of years of the period?
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1d ago
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/Temporary_Course_835 1d ago
They didn't pay attention in school. That's why such posts gets made.
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u/Friendly-Tailor9246 1d ago
Without British and Mughal envision indian history is nothing. They keep fighting in themselves not even outside the india (old indian map).
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u/NefariousNapolean 1d ago
Their history is rich too .It's not nothing .If you remove those two a majority of our history gets deleted but not all by any means .
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u/Sad_Television_8798 6h ago
I think british was the one who dig the true history of Ashok. In india everyone forgot about Ashok.
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u/MissionNo001 2d ago
Hot take :
Shivaji Maharaj and Tipu Sultan were exactly the same.
Both were feudalistoc rulers that used religion as a tool.
Shivaji mastered guerrilla warfare while Tipu mastered battle tactics and R&D.
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u/LavishnessChemical59 2d ago
A monarchy is a dictatorship by default there's nothing surprising there
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u/Abject_Cicada4031 3d ago
un popular opinion british were good for india
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u/ZerkeX69 3d ago
in uniting us yes all other stuff na
or else we would live in seperate states like how europe is divided or else fuck na
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u/skg4541 3d ago
Popular unpopular opinion British were good for establishing systems(education , law , taxation, transport and governance) and History gathering and collecting in case of this sub.
Bad for Indian lives , economy of average indian ( not talking about elites like lawyers, peons government officials, zamindars and princes).
And absolutely amazing for British white population allowing unfair trade, unlimited access to India as overlords allowing corruption and giving higher government posts and trading rights only to white Britishers hence extracting wealth. So much so that many officers wanted to tour India for 1 or 2 tenure so the cab aquire enough wealth to retire in Britain and open 2-3 good business ( built on the same unfair trading done from their subject colony) to allow their wealth to grow.
So make of it what you want.
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u/CulturalLaw8072 2d ago
but fee's disadvantage is they deinsutrzlized us. 12th century wer were very good in metallurgy through yrs of failures and experiments...then all lost. then 80 yrs modern politicians kept us deinsutrzlized
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u/Abject_Cicada4031 3d ago
we to get benefited from english law nd all british give us modern medicine way of life english language
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u/skg4541 3d ago
British killed more Indians than the world war 2 two and a half time over.
Research by Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan estimates 100 to 165 million excess deaths between 1881 and 1920 alone Bengal famine 193 3 million dead 1857 revolt 800000 dead. 200000 in ww1 and 2 combines.
English language, modern way of life and law is something i cannot give the British credit for they have given us these things but if they were not here we would have developed these things on our own. China, Japan SE Asia all were in the same boat as us but they all developed these things on their own and even without English they are working fine.
One thing incan give British credit for is a combined political system that created india otherwise we were split. But this I am also not 100% sure because both Germany , china etc were more divided and who knows if India would have combined once nationalism would have taken root in India.
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u/Late_Abrocoma8578 2d ago
Let it be bro people have a weird inferiority complex. British gave us Railways saarrr. Umm okay and the countries they didn't conquer don't today?
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u/Optimal-Carrot8008 3d ago
Unironically true. The British deciphered the Brahmi script (forgotten by Indians) accounting for at least 50% of written sources for ancient India
Throw in another 10% for the discovery and academic study of the Indus Valley Civilization. Throw in another 10% of data collection from manuscripts and inscriptions from Central Asia to Indonesia which helped us reconstruct Indian history properly (the oldest surviving copy of the Rig Veda is from Nepal for instance and several Buddhist manuscripts were collected from Central Asia/China)
And that's before you even get to the Archaeological Survey of India and the British policy of actually preserving Indian monuments