Abstract of my paper for DUSU
Conf. On
SARASWATI
– A PARADIGM SHIFT IN INDOLOGY 1/2 Aug 2019
(Not attended)
Topic
of the presentation – Saraswati – Road ahead in Academics and on
River banks
Abstract
AIT, which was widely popular
in 19 th century Europe proposed that Saraswati was a fictitious
river and that Vedas were written around 1500 BC.
The
first blow was struck with Harappan excavations in 1920 and clinching
blow in 1980 when NASA’s satellite imagery revealed the underground
paleo- channels and dried beds of Saraswati’s path as was proposed
through the works of Vakankar et el.
Since
then, nearly 40 years have passed and we are still awaiting to
“perfect” our knowledge before releasing it to our future
generations. Correct route would be to include it in our school and
college text books - in history, archaeology, polity, anthropology,
economics, sociology, tourism and science.
A
heavy focus is needed on research in many areas – apart from the
heavily technological work of ISRO, ASI and GSI.
In
fact, the singular fact of Saraswati’s existence till nearly 5000
years back allows us to put the entire Ancient Indian History on a
Time scale that goes upto 10000 BC or beyond. Each new research
should lead to a new revealation about our cultural and spiritual
practises, rightly
described as अध्यात्मविद्या.
There
is a big scope of developing the banks of the invisible river for
tourism.
A
word of caution – Let us not rush to pump out the underground
water. It is our 6000 -10000 year old heritage and we should be
trying to preserve and replenish it rather than exhausting it.
Similarly the tourism promotion should be used as a tool to educate
the large tourist population about India’s culture and true history
– this would be a second front approach to confront the falsities
spread by
western Indologosts.
