Subject to questioning in various circles the veracity of the narratives in the pages of the land’s history, keeping aside for a moment the multitude of ancient texts presenting countless episodes of mythology, public speakers, both accomplished and the lay sections among them, take pride and feel a sense of fascination in recalling the glory that people of a distant past brought to the land. At least two fields of human endeavour in which they excelled and attributed to them that have endured to this day are undoubtedly Ayurveda and Yoga, without meaning to belittle the many other fields in which they have left an indelible imprint, such as sculpture, music, literary wealth including words of wisdom, statecraft, agriculture, code of conduct through years of human life-span, basics of safeguarding life-supporting resources and so on. Thanks to the many invading hordes that gained entry into the land at different times, first of plundering wealth and later to set shop, several generations of the land’s people lost their bearings and bore the brunt of the consequences of alien rule, a legacy that cannot be missed in today’s scenario.
The pages of the land’s later history, from medieval to modern, with writings of chroniclers of those periods may delight readers. What message those pages convey to subsequent generations is a big question mark. One is prompted to pick the topic of people identifying themselves on different counts, including faiths they follow and ethnicity they cannot hide, resulting in the land far from being ideal.
