Aza, I’d like to introduce Will Durant, and The Case For India.
I see no point in re-inventing the wheel and quote Wikipedia… “William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was an American historian and philosopher, best known for his 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, which contains and details the history of Eastern and Western civilizations. It was written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975.”
In the late 1920s, Will Durant was conducting historical research and visited India for the first time. In 1930, Will Durant’s, The Case for India was published. and wrote in his introduction
“1 came away resolved to study living India as well as the India with the brilliant past; to learn more of this unique Revolution that fought with suffering accepted but never returned; to read the Gandhi of today as well as the Buddha of long ago. And the more 1 read the more I was filled with astonishment and indignation at the apparently conscious and deliberate bleeding of India by England throughout a hundred and fifty years. I began to feel that I had come upon the greatest crime in all history. And so I ask the reader's permission to abandon for a while my researches into the past, so that I may stand up and say my word for India.”
Given Will and his wife, Aerial Durant’s standing among historians, which included a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I think the following excerpts are well worth reading.
“At no time in history has India been without civilization : from the days of Buddha, in the fifth century, who is to the East what Christ is to the West ; through the time when Asoka, the most humane of emperors, preached the gentle creed of Buddha from pillars and monuments everywhere; down to the sixteenth century, when culture, wealth and art flourished at Vijayanagar in the south, and a still higher culture, and still greater wealth and art, flourished under Akbar in the north.
It was to reach this India of fabulous riches that Columbus sailed the seas. The civilization that was destroyed by British guns had lasted for fifteen centuries, producing saints from Buddha to Ramakrishna and Gandhi ; philosophy from the Vedas to Schopenhauer and Bergson, Thopea and Keyserling, who take their lead and acknowledge their derivation from India (India, say Keyserling, "has produced the profoundest metaphysics that we know of."; and he speaks of "the absolute superiority of India over the West I philosophy"; poetry from the Mahabharata containing the Bhagavad-Gita, "perhaps the most beautiful work of the literature of the world," down to Sarojini Naidu, greatest of living women poets, and Rabindranath Tagore, who, writing local dialect in a subject land, has made himself the most famous poet of our time. And how shall we rank a civilization that created the unique and gigantic temples of Ellora, Madura and Angkor and the perfect artistry of Delhi, Agra and the Taj Mahal—that indescribable lyric in stone?”
A little later, Durant goes on to say…
“This, evidently, was not a minor civilization produced by an inferior people. It ranks with the highest civilizations of history, and some, like Keyserling, would place it at the head and summit of all. When, in 1803, the invading British besieged the Fort at Agra, and their cannon struck near the beautiful Khass Mahal, or Hall of Private Audience, the Hindus surrendered at once lest one of the most perfect creations of the human hand should be ruined like Rheims. Who then were the civilized? The British conquest of India was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading company utterly without scruple or principle, careless of art and greedy of gain, over-running with fire and sword a country temporarily disordered and helpless, bribing and murdering, annexing and stealing, and beginning that career of illegal and "legal" plunder which has now gone on ruthlessly for one hundred and seventy-three years, and goes on at this moment while in our secure comfort we write and read.”
"Those who have seen the unspeakable poverty and physiological weakness of the Hindus to-day will hardly believe that it was the wealth of eighteenth century India which attracted the commercial pirates of England and France. 'This wealth/' says Sunderland, was created by the Hindus' vast and varied industries. Nearly every kind of manufacture or product known to the civilized world-nearly every kind of creation of Man's brain and hand, existing anywhere, and prized either for its utility or beauty had long, long been produced in India. India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or than any other in Asia. Her textile goods the fine products of her looms, in cotton, wool, linen and silk-were famous over the civilized world; so were her exquisite jewelry and her precious stones cut in every lovely form; so were her pottery, porcelains, ceramics of every kind, quality, color and beautiful shape; so were her fine works in metal-iron, steel, silver and gold. She had great architecture-equal hi beauty to any in the world. She had great engineering works. She had great merchants, great businessmen, great bankers and financiers. Not only was she the greatest ship-building nation, but she had great commerce and trade by land and sea which extended to all known civilized countries. Such was the India which the British found when they came.
It was this wealth that the East India Company proposed to appropriate.”
The Case for India offers a good grasp of just how much history has been hidden from the public, by those who seek to destroy it. You can find the whole book, in pdf here.
https://ia600303.us.archive.org/29/items/TheCaseForIndia-English-WillDurant/TheCaseForIndia_text.pdf
