New Delhi: The committee formed by Ministry of Culture has suggested that attempts should be made to find a correlation between ancient Indian history and Hindu epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata.
According to sources in the Ministry, the committee’s final report states that Hindus had directly descended from the first original inhabitants and that ancient Hindu scriptures were fact, not a myth.
KN Dikshit, chairman of the committee and former Archaeological Survey of India’s joint director-general, told Gulf News about recent researches that had thrown new light on ancient civilisations. He said Indian civilisation dates back much earlier than it has been believed.
“We plan to carry out holistic study of the origin and evolution of Indian culture since 12,000 years before to present, and its interface with other cultures of the world. Indian history is much older than what we all are made to believe. It is also essential to correlate important historical dates with Vedas and epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata,” Dikshit added.
He informed that he was asked to present a report that would help the government rewrite “certain aspects” of ancient history but it was not part of “larger plans to revise history”, as speculated in the media.
One of the members of the committee, Professor Santosh Kumar Shukla, stated that the final report has not been made yet.
“The drafting is at a preliminary stage. Once it is ready, it will be submitted to the Union Culture Ministry. There are no plans to prepare history textbooks for schools or higher education courses as the mandate of the committee is to establish facts on India’s history and culture,” Shukla clarified.
Another committee member, on condition of anonymity, said research on Indian culture and its evolution over a long period of time was a good mission undertaken by the government.
“Indian cultural evolution has been on the basis of the deep knowledge of origin and evolution of universe. It has undergone political onslaught time to time by various invaders. Truth has to be explored with help of available modern scientific and technical tools,” he averred.
