Far from being Ashoka the Great, the evidence suggests an unpopular king whose empire began to crumble while he was still alive. However, texts such as Ashokavadana clearly mention major massacres of Jains and Ajivikas that he ordered long after his supposed conversion. Emperor Ashoka is much revered for having turned into a pacifist after witnessing the human cost of his invasion of Kalinga. Most readers will be surprised to know that many well-known events and characters of Indian history are based on very thin evidence. As others have also pointed out, by downplaying genuine scientific contributions, textbook writers have created a vacuum that is filled with claims of flying chariots. There is more than adequate evidence that ancient Indians made great advances in metallurgy, medicine, mathematics and so on. The extraordinary history of Indian science is similarly ignored or, as some would argue, deliberately downplayed. The great influence of Indian civilization on Southeast Asia is barely mentioned, if at all. Students learn very little about thriving Indo-Roman trade or the exploits of ancient Odiya merchants who pioneered sea routes across the eastern Indian Ocean. For instance, Indian textbooks say almost nothing about the country’s rich maritime history beyond a passing reference to Chola naval raids on Southeast Asia. Moreover, history is not just about the rise and fall of empires but also about other streams of history. This absurd imbalance needs to be corrected. Unless you live in the northeast, you may never have heard of the Ahom kings who ruled Assam for 600 years and even defeated the Mughals. The average Indian student, for instance, will learn almost nothing about the great Satavahana, Vijayanagar or Chola empires of southern India.

Indian history is mostly written from the perspective of Delhi or at most northern India, as if the rest of the country barely existed except as mere provinces.

Land of seven rivers by sanjeev sanyal