Mark Twain, American novelist and writer, stated that "India is the cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, and great of tradition; and our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only." Romain Rolland, French writer and Nobel laureate, observed that "If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men have found home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India."
Why they and others had believed so is explained in this book in the form of a factual account of India's unparalleled and unrivalled but little appreciated and understood 10,000-year-long achievements and contributions to mankind since the Vedic era and their spread to all parts of the globe. The material encompasses India's civilization, culture, societal structure, religions, languages, Vedic and post-Vedic scriptures, scientific discoveries, trade, pacifism, intellectual capital, knowledge, etc. It also includes the post-independence accomplishments in her relentless and steady quest to regain the splendour and glory lost under the 190-year British colonial oppression.
Dr. Sivaji Rao Vallurupalli, born on December 6, 1940, in Gudlavalleru, Krishna district, Andhra Pradesh, India, is a career weed scientist and agronomist credited with significant long-lasting contributions to agricultural science for about 40 years. He earned a master's degree in agricultural science in 1963 in India and a Ph.D. degree in 1973 at Cornell University, Ithaca, U.S.A. After serving on the research faculty of Cornell for two years, he went back to India in October 1975 to work at various governmental and nongovernmental research institutions as a senior scientist, director, and adviser for over 19 years. Dr. Rao published dozens of research papers in national and international journals besides the two editions of a popular reference-cum-textbook "Principles of Weed Science" by Oxford & IBH Publishing Company, India, in 1983 and Science Publishers, USA, in 2000. This professionally accomplished agricultural scientist returned to the U.S. in 1995 to continue his profession.
Despite pursuing his chosen career, he has always nursed an avid and abiding interest in the ancient history of the world, with particular reference to India. Having been taught the British-morphed history lessons and seen the contours of the magnificent Indian history through the British lens, it became a challenging task for students of his generation to search for the true story and put it in proper perspective. This pursuit, which required a relentless research effort, has been lying dormant, waiting for an opportune time to culminate. This decades-old effort has finally materialized in the form of this current book, which exposes, narrates, describes, and discusses the unmatched, peerless, and deep-rooted history and accomplishments of ancient, medieval, and current India.
Dr. Sivaji Rao and his wife, Nirmala Devi, live in California, U.S.A., as also their daughter (Madhavi Lata), son (Srinivas), son-in-law (Rajiev), daughter-in-law (Neelima), grandsons (Nikhil and Milind), and granddaughter (Ria).
India's rich history, religion, civilization, and culture have never been correctly understood by foreigners, particularly those in the West. Very few of them realize that this ancient country is home to a religion that is the mother of all world religions, a civilization that is more advanced than any other religion in the world, and a language that has enriched other world languages immensely. They are also ignorant of the truth that India was the most prosperous country on earth and the world's superpower until the second half of the 18th century CE, when Britain began colonizing it.
There is not an iota of exaggeration in the fact that it was India's wealth that had provided capital to the First Industrial Revolution that swept across Britain and Western Europe between 1760 and 1830, that "capital accumulation and Industrial Revolution in England followed capital depletion and industrial devolution in India", and that "between the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, about 1,000 million pounds were transferred from Indian hoards to English banks." The British East India Company moved to London, with an enormous and inestimable wealth stored away in palatial treasures of various Indian kingdoms within 50 years of the Battle of Plassey. Additionally, a British Parliament directive in 1793 enjoined the company "to take 10 million rupees (one million pound sterling) each year for investment in Britain from the territorial revenues of colonial India. Ten years earlier, Edmund Burke, a British parliamentarian, had predicted that the annual drain of Indian resources to England without an equivalent return would eventually destroy India. Few in the present generation know that after adding interest, inflation, capital appreciation, and investment growth to the gross wealth that was transferred out between 1717 and 1947, Britain depleted India of an amount equivalent to £4 to £6 trillion (US$8 to $12 trillion) at the 2008 value.
Realizing the vital role of the Indian wealth in the British economy, Victor Alexander Bruce (the Earl of Elgin), viceroy of British India (1894-1899), admitted unequivocally in 1894 that "India is the pivot of our Empire. If the Empire loses any part of its Dominion, we can survive, but if we lose India, the sun of our Empire will have set." It was no wonder that Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of Britain (1868; 1874-1880), dubbed India a 'Jewel in the Crown of England'. Another British prime minister, Winston. Churchill (1940-45; 1951-55), the irascible and arch-villain of India, remarked that the possession of this jewel" has made all the difference between Britain being a first and third-rate power."
Vedas (1253)
Upanishads (524)
Puranas (637)
Ramayana (779)
Mahabharata (382)
Dharmasastras (175)
Goddess (540)
Bhakti (252)
Saints (1752)
Gods (1319)
Shiva (417)
Journal (180)
Fiction (69)
Vedanta (387)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist