Dear Jeyamohan,
The short videos you published on your site about various historical places are fascinating and educational. I once had a kind of interest in these kinds of prehistoric sites, and then I migrated from India. Here, if I wanted to see these kinds of things, I would have to go to Indonesia or Vietnam.
This shows the real problem of India: we have too much history to know and preserve. That is why we never bother about our history. We discuss history only if it is useful for our silly caste and religious politics.
Throughout history, it is evident that we have never had any genuine interest in our own history or in history as a whole. The mighty Cholas, who had no knowledge of history writing, left us with only fragments of their history in the form of small notes on stone inscriptions, which primarily pertain to temple property rights. We have absolutely no trace of a three-century-long empire that ruled all of Tamil Nadu, the Kalapiras.
We never wrote anything about history even after we came to know that there is something called historiography. Our history is actually written by Westerners as part of their colonial rule. Even today we have no contemporary history or history of our political and cultural personalities.
We are generally quarrelsome people, and we are quarreling about some petty details about history often; that is our only interest in history. You can see this on your site; these videos on history have had a poor response from the audience. The well-received pieces are the videos you are talking about day-to-day affairs and politics.
Raja Gangadharan
