India has had a glorious history. It is the country here one of the greatest civilization existed. But today, India is in forefront of celebration of western millennium. Its newspapers and periodical are full of colorful millennium stories. Its TV channels have created the unprecedented hype for it. Its intellectuals have not been left behind. The hotels and entertainment Industry is leading the mad millennium rush.
The Indian Corporate sector companies are competing with each other. You have just to look at their ad-campaigns. Nobody, who is somebody, is ready to take risk to be left behind. Political parties too are talking of the challenges of the next century and millennium.
Let us have a look at what the greatest of thinkers of this century of the west had to say about India. Albert Einstein has just been named as the greatest mind of this century. He has said, “We owe a lot to Indians who taught us how to count” without which no worthwhile discovery could have been made’.
Probably, he was referring to Aryabhatta, the mathematician and the astrologer who not only invented the concept of zero, but also introduced the vital concept such as the alphabetical system of expressing numbers, rules relating to square roots, cube roots, and construction of trigonometric sign, tables and an epicanthic model of planetary motions. Think or blocking the view of Aryabhatta and other ancient leaders of science debarring the whole present generation of scientist and technocrat from taking pride in it. It matters a lot even today to belong to a civilization which had a great tradition of scientific innovative tradition.
image source: fyp.uoregon.edu/files/2013/06/Roots-of-Civilization-2aarxh3.jpg
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Mark Twain regarded India as ‘cradle of human race, birth place of human speech, mother of history, and grandmother of legend and great grandmother of tradition’. Now that western historians, intellectual scientists have slowly started to acknowledge the fact that just a millennium back India was a greatest achiever in almost all the fields, blocking and limiting the view of the past strengthens the view that India is the country of incapable peoples and full of grinding poverty and lack of technological developments.
Inheritors of Macoley and Karl Marx propagated the view that there was nothing to conserve in Indian civilization and nothing to take pride in the Indian civilization. They run down anything connected with the greatness of Indian past. They created the false theories to distort Indian history so that India becomes rootless country and disinherited of its past.
Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken for the Earth’s revolution around the sum as 365.25756484 days. Should India not be proud of this fact? Even today in all our religious functions Pundit recite ‘Sanlalpa Manthra’ stating the age of ‘Srishti’ i.e. 1 Arab 45 cores 58 lakhs 85 thousands and over a hundred years. We have a calendar of 5100 years called ‘Kal samwat’ which marks the coming of parikshit to his throne.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The civilization of Harappa and Mohanjodaro dates back to more than 4500 years back. The time frame of Mahabharatha goes back to more than 5000 years. Even the western historian are of the opinion that Indian civilization has a history of 5000 years. According to Divid Frawley, it is 10000 years. The 2000 years history of western calendars stands nowhere in comparison with civilisational calendars of India and China.
The whole farming system was wedded to Indian months and nakshathras. Even today Indian farmers go by the cycle of Indian months rather than January, February, March etc. just before 50 years the dates of birth were noted according to Indian Panching. The large section of society follows it even today.
But in the age of westernization and globalization the Indian calendar is losing its practical values. This has happened in the large part of globe for it was brought by European colonialism and was later sustained by westernization which was wrongly taken as basic value of modernism. It is nobody’s case to abandon the present English calendar or not to celebrate the event of completion of century or millennium. The primary concern is not to lose sight of our great old civilization or its calendar.